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Chart provided by Coindesk.com

Bitcoin has been on a real tear lately. After breaking past it’s previous 2016 high earlier in December, Bitcoin has now passed the 15 Billion Dollar Market Cap making the distributed platform worth more than tech giants Twitter or Dropbox.

One can never know for sure, but the explosive growth is most likely linked to events in India and to a lesser extent Venezuela. Both countries have engaged it what’s been called a “War on Cash,” each done in the name of combatting corruption. In India, a shock announcement declared that 85% of cash in circulation would be worthless in a matter of days. The country was a madhouse as people rushed to digitize their cash and put it into the banking system. The result is a largely cashless India. Venezuela followed with a similar move shortly afterward.

In India, we’re already seeing evidence of alternative trade taking place. Banks and ATMs haven’t had a chance to adopt new standards for bills, so most are down for updates. And India’s economy was highly cashed based. They don’t have the massive prevalence of digital transactions present in Western Commerce. Worse, there’s been a crackdown on gold at the same time. The government has set up high barriers and tariffs on any gold importation. But exchange still needs to happen. The demand is still there. So, as happened in Cyprus during their banking crisis, Bitcoin was able to capture the traffic. The effect has been even more pronounced here.

There’s been banking instability worldwide since 2008… European and Chinese banks are severely overleveraged making the entire system quite fragile. As these events continue to occur, the outlook is expected to be even better for cryptocurrencies in the future. In the short run, the trading volume may slow down and the price may slump as India adjusts to its new system. But the long run view for Bitcoin is bright.