2017 demand was obviously a manipulated pump all in the name of trying to get gullible smaller investors into the market and we have all seen the outcome so far. For now, I guess we just have to wait to see how far this $5k region is going to end up holding until further notice.
i agree with the first part but this part i can not agree with.
what happened in 2017 was not a pump, there was manipulation but the rise to $20k would have happened anyways and it is not because of manipulation, it was because a lot of money was coming in during 2017 and that kind of rise is what naturally happens when you have a tiny market with thin order books which can not have any kind of resistance against that kind of money so the price shoots up.
it was real demand, if you check the news reports you can see for instance coinbase used to have about 1 million new users every couple of days! and those people were coming in because everywhere you looked you could see bitcoin was discussed.