Re: How long before the price tanks sharply because Silk Road is down?

SR volume is a tiny fraction of Bitcoin economy. There are convincing estimates based on the academic study of SR published about four months ago.

I call bullshit on that. If you were writing the truth you'd cite that study in detail. But you didn't.

Two million per month. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.7139v1.pdf

That, and welcome to my "ignore" list.

A surprising result is the tight coupling between Silk Road and the Bitcoin market the daily sales on Silk Road correspond to almost 20% of the average daily volume of USD-BTC exchanges on Mt.Gox, the largest exchange forum.

Doesn't look like SR volume is a tiny fraction of bitcoin economy Wink

The study estimated ~$2M in sales per month. MtGox volume is ~$10M per mo th, being ~65% of the total volume of all "legitimate" exchanges. Add to this OTC. SR is at most 10% of trade volume. Note, most SR merchants would not use AML-compliant exchanges anyway.
Further proving that there is no coupling is the fact that - despite this thread - the price did not sink at all, on the contrary.