Most of the major Bitcoin spikes and leveling-up of the price since 2012 have preceded or corresponded with governments tightening controls, and people using BTC they owned or buying it to evacuate capital to more lightly regulated countries. That's also why there hasn't been a Bitcoin rush for awhile, imho... it's no longer very useful for that, now that all the entrance and exit nodes are monitored. Gold is a bit hard to move, but this article may be underselling to what extent the recent spike in gold prices is attributable to demand for that kind of liquidity. The cross-border, anonymous kind.

The demise of Localbitcoins actual local meetups and trading for cash was the end of a significant way to move money out of regimes that people suspected were going to take it from them.