I think it's possible that recently, some insiders agreed to move the technology in a certain direction and various financial interests may have bought a significant number of bitcoin, resulting in a run-up in price.

I don't think it's a coincidence that we have a huge market event at the precise time that the core developers are discussing bank-friendly changes to the bitcoin standards.

We are looking to remedy these problems.  http://www.altchain.org/?q=whitepapers/paper2.html