I came to the following inference on the reason behind the current rise of Bitcoin value and it boils down to new money coming in.
Its the institutional investors who diverted existing funds or opened new accounts through various brokerages, hedge fund and other financial institutions that started to offer Crypto-related investment opportunities to their clients.
Looking back, the skyrocketing price of Bitcoin left all other altcoins to fall behind in terms of their BTC value.
Nevertheless, the current price charts show that a couple of altcoins also started rising in value. These could be because this new money that was invested into Bitcoin (causing the price increase) is now being invested into these altcoins.
I have not searched historical price trends of altcoins in relation to bitcoin, but if this pattern already exists then this means that for those who HODL altcoins and were not able to do stop-loss orders or convert their altcoins back to bitcoin, then the altcoins they hold will eventually regain their BTC values and they will also eventually earn profit.
This puts into the equation the feasibility of the altcoin as a good investment opportunity.
In the end, those who sell at a loss are the ones who truly lost.. but those who wait until the market stabilizes are all winners as long as the altcoin one invests in has good fundamentals.
BTC and other alt coins will continue to rise in their popularity in 2018.
I agree but not this month.