https://www.coindesk.com/price/

I remember a time when they were giving out free bitcoin at hackathons and conferences etc.

For a casual outsider and a passive market speculator, whats going on with bitcoin and maybe the rest of cryptocurrencies, what are they seeing that we can't?

And any clues as to whats with the recent surge in East Asian interest of bitcoin?

https://www.coindesk.com/annyeong-bitcoin-south-korea-canada-changing-crypto-market/

Note that I've tried googling but a lot of the urls are before May 2017 and are trying to explain about Bitcoin's peak at ~$2000 which is not helpful much.