Most of the people who joined the crypto community at the later part of 2017, especially December were not any real crypto investors. They just heard about the booming prices and decided to join and also make profit. They don't know the potentials of the blockchain technology and the future it holds and that is why now that prices are down, they have all left the market and its left the real crypto enthusiasts. They are those who are seriously doing panic selling over the markets
Maybe it was one of the reasons why the price of bitcoin and altcoin experienced a very significant increase that year, at least it made many people familiar with cryptocurrency. You can see the other side of the incident, when many people know cryptocurrency even though those who invest get a loss but this can make them come back easily when in the next few years cryptocurrency is well received by each country. Honestly, giving someone an understanding of cryptocurrency so that he wants to buy and invest in it is very difficult, need strong evidence so that they believe that cryptocurrency has a value.