it is not a "spike" it is a correction of sorts.
price was artificially lower than the real value of bitcoin and the rise was postponed because of all the FUD that have been coming out with the title of China doing another evil thing to bitcoin.
now that the FUD diminished the price is "recovering" from it.

it is called "profitable" not "successful". and it has not been for everyone. many have not yet even heard about bitcoin cash to claim it and many who have heard are not capable of claiming it. you can see their blocks are completely empty now, it seems mostly like an abandoned altcoin these days

it is funny how whenever the price falls, topics like this spring out like mushrooms. this topic being on top now can act as a reminder to newcomers that spreading FUD about bitcoin is a pretty common thing that happens a lot during the downtrends even if they are simple small corrections.

there has been a LOT more altcoins with a lot higher prices than bitcoin. ZCash just made more noise to become more public specially because of its mining.

someone pointed out something interesting that people always forget: when bitcoin price goes down altcoins get dumped hard. that has to show something

like it or not bitcoin is NOT gold 2.0

obviously bitcoin will never become the world currency that everyone and every country adopts and uses. but that doesn't mean bitcoin is not a global currency which will become so popular someday that everywhere you look you can see it being accepted just like credit cards.

it doesn't have to replace them to become as big as them.

and no matter how much some people try to convince others that bitcoin is only store of value, it will never be that. and if someday it becomes store of value and loses the currency aspect, bitcoin would be as good as dead that day.

try hanging around and learning more about bitcoin and this market first before making a random "speculation" comment in here and embarrass yourself like this.

lots of weak hands.

anybody can enter this market with so little amount of money. then they invest without knowing anything about anything. when something like the China FUD, the split FUD, the bitcoin is dead FUD, exchange hacked bitcoin will die FUD and lots more come out, all these weak hands make irrational decisions and create chaos.

this creates volatile price for bitcoin and that is not good for long term adoption of bitcoin as a currency.

as for crypto market in general which includes altcoin, the biggest weakness is the fact that majority of altcoins are pump and dumps with no usages. they just exist to serve one purpose and that is to be traded.

things may seem "chaotic" for a short time and even cause some confusion to newcomers or even go as far as make them scared. we surely saw all of these in July before all the August first drama.

but in the long term all these things will only make bitcoin stronger. you can clearly see now that it was proven to the whole world that when you fork from bitcoin and nobody wants you, you will become an altcoin. BCH proved that.

since all these news came out way before the 30th of September there should not be any change in price left to be seen on that date apart from a bigger price rise because the news will be behind us.

it is like earlier this year when China announced they will close exchanges. price fell then recovered a little. then exchanges were closed and right on the same day price went up and in less than week we had a new ATH.

what you are missing is that FUD only works if it is said on a correct time and combined with some market manipulation.

for example even if all the CEOs in the world say bitcoin is shit today, nothing will happen because we are on the recovery and price is rising with a good buy support that is hungry for even a $20 discount to buy in.

which altcoin?!
you know they don't move all together. most of the times when bitcoin price is moving big all the altcoins get dumped but their recovery only happens if someone starts pumping them.

so in order to tell you whether to "hold or cut lose" we need to know which altcoin you are talking about.

p.s. try looking in altcoin speculation board: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=224.0

it is not used now, or it is on small scale only because bitcoin is not yet adopted. you may think it is popular now or it has grown but in reality bitcoin is still too small. with all the big volume and so many people invested it is still a small portion of the population.

and from those people a smaller percentage are spending bitcoin or considering to spend bitcoin.
that is why "crypto-tourism" is not something you hear about.

however this will change as the adoption grows. my personal favorite is the Japanese 2020 games which will attract lots of tourists to Japan which is now bitcoin friendly with lots of merchants. hopefully by then it has grown even bigger and that will cause a bigger move in more merchants around the world accepting bitcoin.

what happened when the other one "forked out"? haha

some temporary drama with some price drop prior to the fork because of some fear and then after it was done price went up from $2XXX up to $5000
these forks as long as don't have the majority's support are going to be dead in the waters and will be treated as an altcoin.

this is obviously another shitcoin that is going to be abusing the bitcoin brand to its own advantage and to become a pumped up coin. i don't keep high hopes for this one either although i have been hearing a lot of hype regarding this. so it can be possible to a big rise and a very nice pump to this coin but in the end there will be no real usage for this except to mine and dump and pump and dump.

i'd say the final resistance will be at $3500 but for now it is currently at $4000 and i don't see price going lower than that anytime soon. we are currently seeing the come back to the normal levels and price should go back to $4500 soon and stay there. all this time it was the "abnormal and manipulated" price that we were experiencing doesn't matter how many times they called it a "bubble" it was never true!

regulations is definitely not crucial to bitcoin survival. bitcoin as a decentralized currency can and will continue to function and live without any government's consent.

but the regulations can have a positive effect on bitcoin's adoption. more merchants can feel safer accepting bitcoin. more people can feel safer using bitcoin too. and that is all helpful to the growth in long term.

we created bitcoin to no longer want to use things like credit/debit cards. then altcoins were created to improve on that idea but they have not done anything specially really and now you want to take all those steps backwards and go back to linking what was supposed to be stand alone to the same old thing we got away from!

the way i see it, this is always about demand. will users even want this? there are already bitcoin ATMs but are they really popular and widely used? the fees stop that from happening.

first you need to be willing to spend bitcoin. ask yourself if the restaurant or the gas-station you use started accepting bitcoin today will you be spending bitcoin there? the answer is mostly no. people are not yet so happy about spending their "investment". if that answer changes to mostly yes, then it will be different. the merchants, restaurants and the gas-stations will start happily accepting bitcoin. and it will be easier for them too.

i actually agree with Syke!
why would PayPal even feel pressured about bitcoin. they just can add the option to buy/sell/send/convert/... bitcoin through their service officially if someday they felt any sort of "pressure" and then make a lot of money from it!
fiat will always be with us and we will continue using it even if bitcoin grew too big. and people must use fiat to buy bitcoin (unless they are getting paid) it might as well be through PayPal! just as it is currently thought banks and they are enjoying the transaction fees they take when people transfer money to and from exchanges.

China and others never had any delusion of being able to "stop bitcoin" ever. they have always known this. and whatever they did so far could only delay the inevitable and keep the growth smaller but the growth is happening and adoption is increasing.
i just hope people started to see this too.