The Bitcoin pump in 2013 happened because there was an overwhelming consensus that Bitcoin can have real world use some day. That pump dumped, and Bitcoin has since resurrected itself with concrete evidence of real world usage.
Same thing is happening right now. Everyone sees all these wonderful promises and decides that altcoins are going to do big things some day. Well, they currently aren't doing jack shit- so a pump correction is imminent.
bitcoin price was pumped back in 2013 because there was only one big exchange called Mt Gox which controlled all the bitcoin trading volume. it had nearly 75% to 80% of the market volume.
(sounds familiar doesn't it, Poloniex having same share of the volume in altcoins)
yeah the thought of bitcoin being a real word currency could have affected the price but not as the main reason. the difference however is that even back then there was a lot of real world usage for bitcoin.
but it has never been true about any of the altcoins, most of the top altcoins in lists are centralized anyways!
I have to say I never understood this fundamental distinction between Ford-T and other cars, that is, between bitcoin, the very first crypto currency, and all the others. Of course, being the first, and on top of that, with a mysterious start, adds to the celebrity, but apart from being the first, in what ways is bitcoin special ? It has the oldest technology, it has of course the widest network, and, just as with alt coins, its real world usage is small as compared to its speculative market cap.
The "actual usage" of bitcoin, you know, to buy stuff on the internet (other stuff than crypto or fiat of course !), apart from dark markets and extortion which are the true applications of crypto currencies, or of any other crypto for that part, has almost nothing to do with its speculative market value, which is just the value of an abstract betting token. Crypto is totally speculation dominated, and its little bit of real world usage outside of this, is insignificant in the price setting of the asset.
This is a bit like saying that silver is of course truly valuable, as compared to, say, erbium, because with silver, people make spoons. True, there are many more spoons made out of silver than out of erbium. But the spoon-making industry is not what gives silver its value.
Ethereum has probably much more applications in the gambling industry: ethereum is the perfect gambling crypto, because you can write your bets in solidity. So in a way, ethereum is more adapted to the world of gambling, betting and speculation, than bitcoin, which can essentially only transact. But again, the real usage of these tokens is of essentially no importance in its price setting, which is much more similar to the price setting of collector stamps and complex derivatives, purely based upon the interaction of technical analysis betters on the self-created market.
