The only time I suspected something was wrong (beyond Mark himself) was in April 2013 when my ex-employee contacted me to report there was an account that seemed to be buying bitcoins at a surplus rate, and it seemed to be internal to the company.
It's even worse than I thought. The fake trading started in April.
Read it again. Ex-employee contacted him in April 2013, which means it started even earlier than that.
All considered, it's pretty good that we're maintaining above $200
Well I saw most of 2014 as a consolidation phase as we recovered from the bullshit Gox and China pump in 2013. Meanwhile venture capital poured in to start to build things that people might actually use, and by late 2014 or early 2015 it seemed utility, potential, and the rate of building might be starting to converge with price. Since then things seem kind of stable. At a fundamental level I think the market is waiting for developments, like whether the technology holds up, scalability is feasible, regulation becomes suffocating, something better pushes it aside, a killer app appears, etc. I don't think what Gox did matters much right now, but I could be wrong.