Why did the price of bitcoin increase so dramatically?

I read this question on money.stackexchange, in which a user asks how to tax the speculation gain they (involuntarily) made. This guy (or girl) bought BTC for a few hundred USD a few years ago, lost the respective harddrive, and when they found it again, the BTC were (supposedly) worth a million or so USD.

So I am wondering, why did BTC appreciate so dramatically in other currencies? Is it just because of rising demand, in turn due to increasing trust in BTC?

As a corollary, could the BTC appreciation also be driven by a speculative bubble?

Sorry if this is a very noob question.

henning -- reinstate Monica

Posted 2017-07-07T12:50:55.323

Reputation: 121

possible duplicate of Where do bitcoins come from and what gives them their value?, How is the exchange rate for Bitcoin established?, Why are fiat Currencies inflationary and Bitcoin deflationary?

– Murch – 2017-07-09T21:19:05.203

Answers

some reasons for the price-increase:

-bitcoin becomes an official currency in japan

-Australia Will Recognize Bitcoin as Money and Protect Bitcoin Businesses, No Taxes

-many people know/buy bitcon now, who did not know bitcoin some months ago (in many countries) caused by increasing media coverage

-bitcoin becomes an alternative currency in venezuela, Nigeria and some other countries caused by internal political problems

-the scaling problem seems not to be finally solved but the segwit-activation could improve the scaling-situation

-Russia’s Parliament is Discussing the Legalization of Bitcoin

-meanwhile the blockchain-technology is more established: there are no known hacks of the blockchain self

anion

Posted 2017-07-07T12:50:55.323

Reputation: 727

Price is speculative, and driven by supply/demand. It uses exchanges, just like stock or fiat currency exchange.

Mr.Nobody

Posted 2017-07-07T12:50:55.323

Reputation: 340

So why did demand increase so dramatically? Is it speculation-driven? – henning -- reinstate Monica – 2017-07-11T05:08:38.050

@henning - Yes, since I just said it was speculative. There were many things going on over the last few months that drove price up. Speculation about the scaling efforts, certain governments "legalizing" it, certain organizations accepting it, etc.. Also, it seems there may have been a price pump scheme going on as well. Lots of reasons really, no single one of them is the answer. – Mr.Nobody – 2017-07-11T05:49:16.643

-1

When you see something go up and up, you may think it's a bubble, because nothing can grow forever, right? However, think about what you're measuring. You're measuring the price of BTC in U.S.dollar.

What if we measure it in an inverse way? Let's measure the US dollar in BTC value. Now what you see is that the dollar's value has decreased dramatically. The question you should ask yourself is: can it keep decreasing forever? And I would answer: it has being doing so since its creation.

knocte

Posted 2017-07-07T12:50:55.323

Reputation: 1 531

Not really, because the price increase is the same against a basket of different currencies. – henning -- reinstate Monica – 2017-07-10T16:15:27.340

most of the fiat currencies have had similar behaviours (always declining) over their entire existance – knocte – 2017-07-10T16:19:42.607

Clearly, if the USD had plummeted by several orders of magnitude in the last four years, the world would look completely different. – henning -- reinstate Monica – 2017-07-10T16:25:17.237

This answer is technically correct, but it is not at all the reason for the recent exchange rate changes. – Pieter Wuille – 2017-07-10T16:28:11.240

@PieterWuille he/she didn't ask about recent price moves – knocte – 2017-07-10T16:35:41.170

-4

Many reasons.

The main one is the mining reward system was halved in 2016, as it also was in 2012.

lolololol ol

Posted 2017-07-07T12:50:55.323

Reputation: 211

Why did this get downvoted? You are absolutely clueless about how bitcoin works, if you dismiss the mining reward system being halved was not one of (if not the main) reason bitcoin rose when it did. – lolololol ol – 2017-07-12T01:35:00.543

I'm late to that party, however we prefer answers to have more explanation. Some people may have downvoted your post as "low quality". – Murch – 2017-07-12T06:14:05.893

Yep. That's why I gave it a -1 (although I'm clearly not alone). Please don't be discouraged or take offense, however. Your answer is correct, just not explained very well. In truth, it wasn't a great question to begin with. It's hard to give a good answer to this one. – Jestin – 2017-07-12T23:56:45.953