The Product - 2015 Hype Cycle

In 2015 Crypto currency was on ‘Trough of Disillusionment’ – part of Gartner’s Hypecycle. With an expected plateau in two to five years. This means that the expectations of crypto as it was intented, fail to deliver. The producers of the product shake out or fail. The product can only keep on living when early adapters keep on investing and using the product (Gartner, Z.J.)

Before 2015 the hype was huge. On 7 November 2010, the Bitcoin passed the 1-million-dollar mark. Which was a record. In 2013 the banks of Cyprus where nearly bankrupt. The banks decided to take people’s savings (every euro above €100.000, -) and invest it into stock shares. A lot of bank account holders started to invest into Bitcoin. Obviously, because they didn’t want their money to be invested by a nearly bankrupt bank. The worth of one Bitcoin got from $80,- to $260,- per coin (Westra, 2017)!

The Chinese People’s Bank Acknowledged Bitcoin as a currency. They started to see a future for Crypto. People where free to invest into Bitcoin. The hype in China started to grow immensely. The Chinese craziness created a huge breaktrough for the Bitcoin, which became worth over $1250,- (Westra, 2017).

Just over two weeks, the same bank declared that Bitcoin won’t be acknowledged as an official currency to make all day payments. No more financial companies or any company in line with Bitcoin, isn’t allowed to trade with the digital currency anymore. This is a start of the strangling of the Chinese cryptomarket. A following of this matter, is that the Crypto lost loads of value (Westra, 2017).

In 2014, Mt. Gox was declared Bankrupt. Mt. Gox was one of the biggest online exchanges of Crypto. On the 24th of February Mt. Gox officially closed their doors. The company kept on telling that they were a victim of hackers. This wasn’t exactly true. In fact, the company lost over 744.000 BTC (short for Bitcoin). Which is over 427 million dollars (Westra, 2017).

From 2012 to 2014 there happened a lot regarding Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. From hacks, to bankruptcy, to world records. It was time to make up rules and restrictions for Bitcoin. It was a very unstable market with a lot of pros and cons. The market was unstable, and the technology was way to technical for the masses. The common people did saw Bitcoin as an opportunity to invest in.

But it was too complicated. The cryptomarket requires a lot of knowledge and technical skills to take part in. This is why the Bitcoin stalled on ‘through of Disillusionment’ on Gartner’s Hype cycle, in 2015.

On the other hand, Ethereum exploded in 2015, early 2016’s. It’s worth raised from 2,83$ tot 8,24$ in just over one year! This is a raise of more than 300%. Which is nothing in the years that where following. But, considering the minor attention of the people, this is huge (Banken, 2016).