I actually think there is a lot of merit in the price rise being down to the amount of BTC being invested in mining gear at the time. Whilst there was a lot of good news, there was also bad news not to dissimilar to what has been newsworthy recently... hacking, theft and collapse of exchanges. Most of the good news was actually following the increase in price where people became aware of their huge gains and found lost coins. The death of SR is over played in my opinion and likely didn't have a huge positive impact on price.