As I'm looking over the last 6 months of 2018, I'm actually looking at the price of Bitcoin from November 2017 to today. Seven months ago Bitcoin (BTC) was $10,678.60, on it's way to shortly become it's all-time high of $19,813.60 in mid-December 2017. Today on the last day of June, 2018, it is $6,355.58. A person can easily draw parallels between the crypto currency or digital currency marketplace and the precious metals market of 2011-2012.
In the summer of 2011 gold was also rising, going from $1,418.00 in April to a new high just after Labor Day at $1,895.00/ounce. Then it crashed, and not just a little, going from $1,615 in a month and now languishes with a ceiling of $1,300.00.
Silver, also, rose to new-time highs, trying to break its' previous $50.00 maximum in the 20th century, only to hit $48.70 before becoming like Icarus and burning down to it's current $16-$17 range.
And yes, I will use words like "range" and "ceiling" and "manipulation" and "suppression" because I believe all financial markets, especially those who could challenge the petro-dollar and the narco-dollar, are controlled. The reasons why are not given here and left as an exercise of research for the reader. But I am declaring that for similar reasons, the "new" digital crypto currency market, once it started a grass-roots movement, had to be controlled and manipulated for much the same reasons. This is only my opinion, I am not a financial planner, so do your own due diligence in researching these markets and do not follow any opinions that I might have without doing your own research.
Having listened to Bix Weir, jsnip4, Clif High, and several others over the following months, it would seem that the Oct-Dec 2017 rise of Bitcoin from mere hundreds to thousands of dollars was a controlled pump-and-dump not seen previously in financial marketplaces. The "wrong" people had invested first, and the "elites" wanted in, but not at the currently high prices of $5,000-6,000 in October 2017. You have to understand the mentality of the elite. When someone "makes a killing", they are not glad for the person, but filled with rage and jealousy. And what do they do? They turn back the clock so that they, too, have the same "opportunity" as the common rabble. With "dark pools" of bank currency, the elite literally have limitless amounts of currency to do whatever they wish. In this case, the elite found out they could not "turn back the clock" to Bitcoin only being worth $0.01. First, they had to dissuade the current holders of Bitcoin into giving up their profits.
This they did with the formation of "futures derivatives" in December 2017 with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the USA. The public was too well-educated; too many had private wallets, as shutting down the Asian Bitcoin exchanges had shown. So instead, several people with very deep pockets made the price of Bitcoin astronomical. BTC went from $10,300.00 USD to $19,813 in a single month. In only three weeks, Bitcoin was the talk of the financial world. Everybody wanted in. The price of Bitcoin was predicted to go even higher to $40,000.00. Which means the mouse had the cheese in its' mouth, and it was time to spring the trap.
Just before Christmas 2017 those who had put their money into Bitcoin in order to make it rise up took their profits, pulling nearly all their money out. Elliot Wave Theory was meaningless, is meaningless to the elite with unlimited currency and not obeying the rules that others must follow. Bitcoin value slipped and fell, falling to $7,130.00 by February 06th, 2018. But not lower than $5,800.00. Nowhere near the pre-Labor Day 2017 lows below $4,000/BTC. And certainly not in only the hundreds of dollars per BTC.
Much like the gold and silver markets where the majority of the common people "stand for delivery" while the people who can spend millions of dollars are forced into non-physical markets, this is Not Good Enough for the elite. The common rabble were supposed to quit Bitcoins and go back to Certificates of Deposit at their local banks, or jump back into the US/UK stock markets for their usual 7-year fleecing. Something is wrong. No one is cooperating with the usual paradigm this time.
But if it is one quality of the elite that the common people do not have, it is the ability to use patience. Most people have bills to pay, houses to mortgage, mouths to feed, children to put through college, medical expenses to pay. Someone worth more than $100 million dollars for the past two generations in their family doesn't care that gasoline when up $0.10 at the pump over the weekend. Or that steak went up $0.50/lb. at the local grocery store. They can wait others out. Which is what I believe we have seen the last 5 months, from February 2018 to June 2018.
Don't get me wrong - with crypto currencies the elite have 3,000+ new currencies to pump-and-dump just like the rest of the world's currencies. They can jump from Bitcoin to Litecoin to Digibyte to EOS to ADA to no-name coins and pump-and-dump each in 24 hours or less before moving on. Somehow certain people can move from altcoin exchange to altcoin exchange while everyone else is locked out for "maintenance" reasons.
But even the elite cannot wait forever. They have special dates that even they must live by, such as the USA Tax Day (April 15) and end-of-year taxation (last business day of the year). Fall and Winter is traditionally when the moneylenders and those who rule them act for profit motives.
So to answer my own question above, it was when futures derivatives were introduced for Bitcoin in December 2017, much like physical gold was only allowed to be traded again for American citizens after a futures market had been created for it in 1975. In order to control the price of the physical. Now we have a futures market for Bitcoin, plus the overwhelming pump-and-dump of December 2017 to shake out the "weak hands" in this new marketplace.
It is possible to win, however. Take a lesson from the gold and silver market, and "demand delivery". When you buy Bitcoin et al, don't keep the coins on an exchange. Download a wallet and take your coins off of the exchanges and keep them on your own computer, or hardware wallet, or a paper wallet. Do the research on this. In so doing, you'll have a form of currency outside the controlled, Know Your Customer, banker's-rules system we have now. Just like gold and silver. But unlike gold and silver, this digital currency is worldwide, and much faster to transfer. Don't play by the elite's rules. Leave the system, and make your own.
(Image found on the Internet and belongs to the appropriate person(s). Used without permission.)