I will try to give on overview of current Bitcoin situation and make prediction on how this turmoil will end. Most people that are a bit somewhat interested about developments in the cryptoworld know by now that Bitcoin is at least half of the year at full transaction capacity and currently it can't grow. Fewer people know that situation is intentional, and the main culprits are big investors, namely AXA Strategic Ventures. Still, some people have "seen through the bullshit", and are aware that the function of that investment is to suffocate and marginalize Bitcoin.
The mechanics is simple: Blockstream advertises off-chain scalling solution called Lightning vaporware, as well as on-chain solution called Segregated Witness which by the way scales Bitcoin transactions to just 1.7x the current capacity, and that is happening after the 95% of nodes accept the new version which is unlikely to happen soon. Lightning, on the other hand, is practically what steals Bitcoin transactions, executing them in parallel network with its own hubs (that are reaping fees from transactions), and Bitcoin then is used as a settlement network, which was not the Satoshi's vision at all. The say hard-forking is dangerous for Bitcoin and rising the block size, which would be simplest and most effective way of scaling it, is not needed right now. In the same time, Blockstream uses censorship on Reddit and other forums forbidding the debate about eventual hard-fork which would raise block size.
The main problem here is that Bitcoin mining is practically pretty centralized by several Chinese mining pools which are responsible for eventual hard-fork. So as long as the Bitcoin price is high enough for miners to make profits, things are hardly going to change. What I am pretty convinced is that Bitcoin price is being artificially pumped by the ones that wish the Bitcoin to stay marginalized and irrelevant in world economy. They have plenty of fresh dollars at their disposal to keep the price relatively high so I think this kind of status-quo will continue for quite long. Still I think this can't continue indefinitely because there are more and more miners and Bitcoin continues to have low utility value because number of transactions stays the same. The moment they can't pump Bitcoin anymore - that's the moment of potential Bitcoin crash, and only then pools will be forced to change politics and adopt clients which are supporting larger block sizes. The problem is, by then, Bitcoin will effectively be dead and not used enough to stay alive through such crysis - and there are serious pretenders to cryptocurrency throne: Ethereum and Monero.
Current fraudulent banking system fights, and will fight to defend themselves. Healthy Bitcoin economy won't easily replace the financial mess we have worldwide. Bitcoin has tough and powerful enemies which right now are using all their power to show themselves to be the Bitcoin supporters, but what they actually do is destroying it, and they know it and want it to be like that. 75m USD are dimes to them and it's pretty low price for stopping the progress. And that's what we know, and that's just for starters. Be sure more money will be injected into Blockstream and spent on keeping the artifical price of Bitcoin.
