Since May 2016, market capitalization on bitcoin has nearly quadrupled, from $7.16 billion in May 2016 to $27.9 billion today.
Major drivers of the trend were Japan allowing bitcoin to become legal tender in the Land of the Rising Sun (albeit with lots of oversight), and Russia's announcement that they'd rule on cryptocurrency legality in 2018.
Bitcoin supply was also halved in mid-2016, a computerized process meant to stop inflation. Fewer bitcoins sent the cost skyrocketing. Another factor was the falling value of the euro, as a result of instability in the EU.
However, the cryptocurrency hasn't evaded challenges. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruled in March against two bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF), which are mutual funds that may be freely traded like they certainly were stocks.
The SEC wrote that the ETF's were in violation of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 "which requires, among other items, that the guidelines of a national securities exchange be designed to stop fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices and to safeguard investors and the general public interest."
Traders have petitioned the SEC to overturn its decision, but it's yet to come calmly to a brand new ruling.
Other challenges which have faced bitcoin in 2010 include strict regulation in China and the threat of a "hard fork," where a small grouping of mostly-Chinese cryptocurrency exchanges threatened to split bitcoin into two currencies over the matter of a well balanced bitcoin utilized in few transactions (as it's now) or an updating bitcoin utilized in many transactions.
"Using one side, several influential Chinese miners want to improve bitcoin's block size to allow for more transactions per block," said Chris Burniske, a blockchain products lead analyst at fund manager ARK Invest, to CNBC. "On another side, bitcoin's most influential software developers wish to implement a pc software update called Segregated Witness to allow for more transactions, among a bunch of other improvements to the protocol."
"The issue with a split, and especially one for bitcoin, is the fallout in terms of publicity as it will gain no favors in the complexity and show of disunity."
A new currency, litecoin, was created, which has helped to mitigate the split in the bitcoin miner community over the hard fork.
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