In mid-September 2017, Bitcoin was trading at $ 3,500, Ethereum was at $ 250, and XRP was at $ 0.18. Two months later, in December 2017, BTC set a historical maximum value of $ 20,000, and in January of the following year, ETH and XRP reached $ 1400 and $ 3.71, respectively. In a matter of weeks, many altcoins showed thousands of percent growth, and the market turned into a real financial bubble, which burst as quickly as it formed, writes RBC Crypto. This year there are all the prerequisites for repeating such a scenario. Cryptocurrencies are gaining attention amid geopolitical uncertainty and depreciation of national currencies as a result of unprecedented stimulus measures to support the economy. The Fed printed several trillion dollars, proving the value of limited-emission assets like Bitcoin or gold. In 2017, the main driver was the fear of lost profits, investors bought up coins in order to make money on the growth of their value. Now the interest in cryptocurrencies has quite fundamental reasons. After falling to $ 3800 in March, the bitcoin price quickly recovered to its previous level of $ 10,000 and in August updated its annual maximum at $ 12,400. wait for the appearance of a bubble in the market and a multiple growth in the remaining months. There is currently no hype around the industry and no demand from a very large number of retail investors. To start a new wave of parabolic growth of the crypto market, an influx of institutional investors is needed, the expert explained. For this, conditions must emerge that currently do not exist and they are unlikely to appear before the end of 2020. To have prospects for further growth, bitcoin needs to overcome the psychological mark of $ 14,000, added LAZM CEO Philip Modnov. According to him, there will most likely not be an abnormal rise in the price of cryptocurrencies at the end of 2020, this is more likely a year after the halving, that is, in the spring of 2021. In 2017, the popularity of the cryptocurrency market was also influenced by the ICO sphere. It has been an extremely popular way to raise funding for startups. Many of them managed to raise money with only an idea, without a minimum viable product. This had a positive effect on the Ethereum rate, which at its peak reached $ 1400, and after the failure of the ICO, it fell by more than 90%. Now the field of decentralized finance has replaced the initial offerings of tokens. It is also directly related to the Ethereum blockchain, and is extremely volatile. For example, on September 14, the coin of the DeFi platform Yieldfarming insure SAFE rose in price by more than 500% per day. And this happened after one tweet from the head of another, the most popular project at the moment, Yearn Finance. His YFI token was released on July 18 and grew in price by more than 100,000% in 2 months. However, the DeFi sphere is still very far from the popularity of ICOs. Google Trends data shows that decentralized finance is not interesting to a wide range of users. While in 2017, information about the initial offerings of tokens was actively searched on the network, initially they had a reputation for easy money, which quickly turned into a failure. Photo: Google Trends “There is some potential for significant growth before the end of the year in the DeFi sector. Profitable pharming is currently in significant demand, however, even here everything will depend on the state of the entire crypto market. It is unlikely that DeFi will "show xx" (provide several times growth - editor's note) if the total market capitalization does not grow, and the leading digital currencies and tokens stand still, "Pershikov explained. Experts believe that in the next three months, one should not expect a repeat of the 2017 cryptocurrency boom. However, digital money quotes can still update the highs of the current year and continue the upward movement. A sharp and multiple growth of the market may be affected by the arrival of institutional investors, but this is hardly possible until the end of 2020.