Visualizing the Journey to $10,000 Bitcoin

View the high resolution version of today’s graphic by clicking here.

It has been a breakthrough year for the world’s original cryptocurrency – and on November 28th, 2017, the bitcoin price blew past the psychological barrier of $10,000 with unprecedented pace. After all, it was only two days prior that the cryptocurrency was trading at $9,000.

The Year of the ICO

While the journey to $10,000 bitcoin is an incredible one, it is part of a wider story as well.

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) for other cryptocurrencies have also boomed, and more than 92% of all funds raised through ICOs happened in this year alone. With this mechanism hitting the mainstream, about $3.8 billion have been raised through ICOs in total.

Further, they’ve been profitable as well for speculators. A report from Mangrove Capital last month noted that the average return across 204 ICOs it was tracking was 1,320%.

Despite being temporarily banned in China and South Korea, ICOs have not been slowing down. So far in this month (up to Nov 26, 2017), ICOs have already hit new highs with $743.2 million raised, surpassing the earlier record-holding month of September 2017 ($662.9 million).

Note: this article was originally published on Nov. 27th as Bitcoin was trading at ~$9,600. The article and graphic have since been updated to reflect hitting the $10k total.