From the beginning of the year, bitcoin started with around $1,000 and it is about $17,400 now. Analysts have been busy trying to give reasons why bitcoin has continued to rise all these while not minding the kicks and attack it has been getting from different world personalities and countries. Having proved many financial pundits wrong all these while, it makes one believe that bitcoin is actually unstoppable.
Do you think that bitcoin will break another record of reaching $20,000 before the end of the year?
you can not find reason before the rise, you can then associate reasons with the rise after it already happened. that is a huge difference.
in January 2017 nobody could ever know that Japan is going to adopt bitcoin as a currency and then after they did nobody could imagine they also would remove taxes on bitcoin payments. these two combined led to a big movement around the world where other countries started doing similar things. apart from that it gave bitcoin some legitimacy that it didn't have in the eyes of many.
increased adoption led to increased speed of the rise and price reached $5000ish. the rise on its own brings more investors who have been left behind so price continued rising to $8000
then bitcoin hit mainstream adoption in US when CME and NASDAQ started adopting bitcoin against all odds. the meant a million new users sign up in 2 days on Coinbase to buy bitcoin and that is still growing.
again increased adoption led to increased rising speed which then broke $10,000 and other ATHs all the way to $19,000
we may not see $20,000 by the end of 2017 but it certainly is not far. it will be reached in a month or so.