| If so far we wondered about the direction of the market, now it is official: 2019 has awakened the market and changed its course upwards. As time passes, the HODL and the DCA strategies continue to prove themselves as the best investment methods because of the great difficulty in trying to schedule the market or design short-term trading plan. Bitcoin is the most dominant currency on the crypto markets, and it's again stealing the spotlight from the altcoins. However, there are still some opportunities to invest in trading against the dollar as well as in the IEOs that are still being launched successfully on exchanges. After a relatively quiet period on behalf of the mainstream media, Bitcoin is coming back to the headlines as people are looking for reasons for the current bullish wave. Still, as we already know, it's difficult to predict or to explain the behavior of the market rationally for a long time. 2019 So Far In Crypto 2019 has been so far full of events and news which seemingly catalyzed Bitcoin's price surge. In February, Litecoin's price went up significantly alongside the launch of two new MimbleWimble-based privacy coins called Grin and Beam. They attracted interest in what used to be a sleepy market. Additionally, we can see talks about the bottoming prices, as well as such for new highs around the upcoming Bitcoin halving which contributed to changing the bearish trend. And if that wasn't enough, Binance Launchpad - a platform for launching new projects backed by the leading crypto exchange, gave birth to the IEO phenomenon which set fire to the whispering embers and woke the put the bear market to rest. What started as moderate lesions, continued to gain further momentum thanks to large corporations which expressed their renewed interest in the quickly growing cryptocurrency ecosystem. Among them, we saw big industry names such as Nike, Disney, Facebook, Samsung, Fidelity, and other companies who want a share of the pie of a market that's shaping up right in front of their eyes. Moreover, the VanEck/SolidX Bitcoin ETF, which has been postponed on multiple occasions still elicits interest, as well as anticipation. It's also important to mention the Lightning Network which continues to gain momentum and appears to be a very reliable solution to the problem of payments in Bitcoin, without making any substantial changes to its core code. The last few weeks can be concluded as vibrant, with quite a lot of news and updates. We saw the market respond accordingly as the trading volume soared and miners woke up in anticipation to pile up as much Bitcoin as they can for the next wave and the upcoming advance. | 
BTC: $8700
ETH: $270
XRP: $0.45
What Had Caused Bitcoin To Gain 230% In 2019? Year In Review