The explosive increase in the value of bitcoin is the talk of the trading world. Questions of how high it could go or whether it was a bubble dominated business media at the end of the summer and into September when traders returned from the slow summer vacation period.

JP Morgan Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon added fuel to the fire by calling bitcoin a fraud and a bubble in a CNBC interview in September (see “The cryptos are creeping toward the exchanges,” page 40). This coming on the heels of China restricting  the trading of bitcoin created a top of sorts. During the week of Sept. 11 through Sept. 18 alone,  bitcoin moved from above $4,350 to below $3,000 and then back above $4,000 according to CoinBase. Bitcoin hit is peak just shy of $5,000 on Sept. 1. Its low for 2017 was  $775.98 on  Jan. 11 meaning that its value grew by a factor of nearly 8x in less than eight months.