I'm sure and optimistic that this year could be better than 2017, even though there's a lot of negative news about bitcoin and a lot of users are panicked and selling bitcoin but I'm sure that bitcoin performance will soon improve and the end of the year could reach at least $ 50k.
It's too early to speculate about it since we are still in the midst of the year 2018. But for me, there's a great potential that this year would be better than 2017. If ever the marketprice of bitcoin would go bullish before this year ends and will go beyond 19K$, then I would conclude that 2018 is better than the previous year. I strongly believe that btc can achieve such price.