The Bitcoin (CRYTPO: BTC) price put in a tremendous show in October, hitting a new all-time high of US$66,930 (AU$90,445) on 20 October.
Since then, the Bitcoin price has retraced 5.9%, currently trading for US$62,966.
So, a bit of a loss for crypto investors who bought right at the high and are looking to sell today. Or, as is becoming more common, perhaps buying something with their digital currency today.
Over the longer-term
As for investors who bought 8 years ago and held on? Well, you likely won't hear them complaining.
On 5 July, 2013, the Bitcoin price stood at US$66, according to data from CoinMarketCap. That works out to a gain of 95,993% at today's prices.
Getting back to October…
What drove the Bitcoin price gains in October?
On 1 October, the Bitcoin price was right at US$42,914. By the time Halloween festivities wound down on 31 October, Bitcoin was trading for US$60,699. That's a gain of more than 41% for the month.
What helped propel the Bitcoin price higher in October?
While many factors were at play, the biggest tailwind for the token last month looks to be the launch of the first (and later in October the second) US futures-based Bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF).
The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (NYSE: BITO) began trading in US markets on Tuesday 19 October, the first Bitcoin linked ETF off the rank. (Full details here.)
Commenting on the launch, Simeon Hyman, global investment strategist at ProShares said at the time:
We are really excited to bring BITO, the first Bitcoin-linked ETF, to investors as an important opportunity for them conveniently to invest in Bitcoin in their regular brokerage account. This is going to allow many people who have been waiting for an easy way to do this and a robust way to do this to now be involved and have it in their portfolios.
While that was in the latter half of the month, rumours that United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Gary Gensler was poised to greenlight the ETFs were widely circulating early in October. Gensler had said that crypto investors should receive the same levels of safety measures as traditional share market investors.
As for November, today's Bitcoin price action (it's up 4.2% in 24 hours) likely wasn't hurt by the announcement from Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA), which revealed it will begin offering crypto services to its customers.
