I think the difference is that more adopters are coming in. PayPal is using bitcoin, institutional bodies are coming in and this means more growth to the bitcoin. The difference again is that the hype for 2017 was expected because at that time nothing was negative to bitcoin except for the bubble stuff. This time, it wasn't expected because covid-19 and economic challenge.
Indeed because of covid-19 it really hit hard the stock market while the crypto market remains the same that is why several investors choose to move on it. They more likely used it as a safe haven and then eventually understand the capabilities of Crypto. Besides, the adoption was also increasing from government, large companies such as Paypal, and other institutions. The growth speed before was phenomenal and it increases because of FOMO while today's speed growth was slow, not as speedy as we had before but much stronger and perhaps adoption was the cause of this one. Honestly, I kinda like today's growth compared we had before.
Many see the potential since despite of the economic crisis still bitcoins stands and doing a good job for maintaining it's stand compare to any other assets there, that's why by now it gather confidence to the forex trader to shift on it and see some several of them trading bitcoins and cryptocurrency. And for the PayPal's adoption for sure we can see more from it and maybe more big money will be pour in the market duw to this iconic acceptance happened this year.