BTC has risen quite a bit recently, but at a slower overall rate than in December 2017.
I disagree.
The Bitcoin price what we had last December 2020 until now was from $20,000 to $42,000 and that's a $22,000 increase in just couple of weeks, while in 2017, we had $900 to $20,000 which is only $11,000 of price increase, so what's the "slower" rate you were trying to say? It is Crystal clear that Bitcoin is much more aggressive now than before, that's because of recent countries adopted Bitcoin and big companies like Tesla and Microstrategy investing in bitcoin.