I spoke with few friends recently about the hype that the crypto market received at the end of 2017.
I wonder how was it before 2017.
I was into the market in the year 2015 and the price I got into was around 600USD/BTC. I would say the number of new users who are entering the market obviously increased but then the popularity of different coins was much lower. Bitcoin and crypto still have a cultish following and thus its difficult to make a person understand that these are legitimate technologies that can overthrow the banking system.
Was the market easy to manipulate?
It was the same in my opinion.
pump and dumps were more common?
Small pumps and dumps are always happening if you close watch the minute-to-minute price changes. Bigger pumps were not common.
Were people more into ICO's? the ICO image was better than it is today?
I was not into ICOs at that time and neither am I today. I prefer to keep bitcoin as my bigger stash and have some altcoins worthy enough as well. If I feel any ICO coin is worth getting into I would buy them when the hit the exchange.