There were a lot of positive news in the market last year which lead to a bullish market. The sudden price surge grabbed many investors' attention and this lead to a further increase in price making a bubble which when popped, took away many with it. The dump was necessary for bitcoin's price to become stable. Now that the price has become stable, we can expect BTC to grow steadily.
With the widely publicized crash people will now be a lot more weary when investing in bitcoin and that should mean we largely end up with well researched investors who understand bitcoin's potential instead of people hoping to get rich overnight. That's a stronger platform for bitcoin to grow off of than anything we've had before.