So who really knows what this latest price spike is attributed too?

We have the following:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/12/05/cryptocurrency-monero-to-be-accepted-by-45-musicians-such-as-mariah-carey-g-eazy-sia-for-holidays/#471e54dd7885
http://jeffq.com/blog/on-the-linkability-of-zcash-transactions/
or
Bullet Proofs and Scalabilty
https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/7hbfal/20171203_monero_dev_meeting_summary_and_logs/

We have user growth, no real competitors and technical fundamentals.  

What I do know is that the networking effect is kicking in and we are now in the same user growth phase as both Bitcoin and Ethereum during the Reddit 30K to 80K subscriber phase.

http://redditmetrics.com/r/Monero
http://redditmetrics.com/r/Bitcoin
http://redditmetrics.com/r/Ethereum

Price appreciation has been around 800% in this phase in a very short time frame:
Bitcoin 8 Months
Ether 4 Months

I'm predicting a $1K price in a very short period. Probably the end of March when we historically have our highs. I'm guessing we will have a protracted pullback after that.

For the first time in 4 years, I'm having problems withdrawing XMR from Polo. Same as Ether when it took off!

Good times ahead!