The cryptocurrency market did not have a good year in terms of price performance. The drop can be also related to several issues that hit the market during the last 12 months.

For example, back in January, the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck was hacked. This attack resulted in the loss of 523 million NEM tokens (XEM), close to $500 million at that time. This situation has severely affected the market and marked an inflexion point in the regulatory environment in Japan.

This situation showed the risks associated with having virtual currencies stored in an online platform. The best advice is to store virtual currencies in a cold wallet without being connected to the internet.

Although the exchange gave back users’ funds, the effects on the space and on NEM were noticeable. Now, the exchange is operating once again.

There is another exchange that was hacked for about $195 million. BitGrail is an Italian exchange that has been targeted by a group of hackers that stole 17 million XRB (currently NANO).

Japan has since then improved its regulatory environment. It has created new regulations for exchanges and every crypto company that wants to operate in the market must be previously approved by the government.

Another issue that has affected the credibility of some projects was the scandal around the TRON white paper. The TRON white paper has been accused of being copied from many other projects.

.@justinsuntron why does your TRON whitepaper make wholesale copying of @IPFSbot and @MineFilecoin without a single reference? Bitswap, PoRep, PoSt, these are not your ideas?

— Bedeho (@bedehomender) January 7, 2018

Justin Sun, the founder of the TRON Foundation, said at that moment that this could be related to the fact that they did not have an office in San Francisco to work on this. Furthermore, he provided the latest Chinese version of the whitepaper.

Another thing that the market experienced this year was a bear trend that affected the price of most virtual currencies in the space. Since Bitcoin reached $20,000 at the end of 2017, it has dropped during different periods of times,

Bitcoin fell under $7,000 back in February for the first time in 2018. During the next monhts, it reached $6,000 but tried to recover on different occasions. However, it fell under $6,000 in November and it reached the lowest point in more than one year when it was traded under $3,300.

Nouriel Roubini, the economics professor that is known for predicting the global financial crisis in 2008 has been a very present figure this year in the space. Since the very beginning, it has attacked virtual currencies, Bitcoin (BTC) and experts in the field.

He was present at a hearing organized by the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs back in October. At the event, he attacked Peter Van Valkenburgh, research director at Coin Center, and has also been very hard against virtual currencies. For example, he said that no one uses Bitcoin more than criminals and terrorists.

Additionally, he had a public discussion with Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum. He mentioned that Buterin is a scammer and that he stole 75% of all the Ether available. However, Buterin explained that he did not have this amount of money.

99% of crypto land is one shitcoin traded for another shitcoin. And the average shitcoin lost 90% or more of its value in the last year. So Crypto Land is Crap Land, a cesspool of lunatics with severe Freudian scatological obsessions that swim 24/7 in their own stinking shit.

— Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) October 11, 2018

One of the most harmful things that affected the whole ecosystem during 2018 was the hash war between Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV. On November 15, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was going to experience a network upgrade. However, the community was divided on how the network should be prepared to scale. This is why Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin ABC supporters decided to start a hash war.

Bitcoin SV (BSV) supporters were nChain’s Craig Right and CoinGeek’s Calvin Ayre. Those opposed to Bitcoin SV and supporters of the Bitcoin ABC proposal were Bitmain’s Jihan Wu and Bitcoin.com CEO Roger Ver.

Just a few hours before this network upgrade, the market dropped to the lowest point in more than a year. Indeed, Bitcoin dell down to $3,300 after this conflict in the network. Due to Bitcoin’s price decrease, the network has also lost part of its hash rate. Bitcoin’s hash rate lost around 50% since its all-time high in August.

During this hash ware, Bitcoin SV miners were not able to dominate the chain. In the end, they decided to split from the Bitcoin Cash network and create their own coin (BSV).

The market has experienced very negative things this year, and these were the most important ones. However, there are many important things that are worth mentioning. Bitcoin has experienced a genuine growth in terms of development. Other virtual currencies had also experienced a positive year taking into account their developments.

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