Why did the value of 1 BTC fall from ~1100 USD in December to ~450 now? I can understand volatility for a couple 100 dollars even, but the value has almost halved. Is this due to the Mt. Gox hacking?
Those are more speculations IMO, but I believe reasons are clear:
1. Mt.Gox
2. Other exchanges suffers attacks
3. Charlie S.
4. Then it was not bad
until5. ITS
6. China (maybe yes/maybe no)
but all of those means nothing
Bitcoin is not 1 year old project and it is very strong even with all of those issues there are plenty of good news too.Satoshi went public with Bitcoin in 2009... I've been registered on bitcointalk since 2011. Not sure where you got the idea it was not yet 1 year old...
Back to the OP's question, this is Bitstamp's price chart for "all data" from Bitcoincharts - you can see than in April 2013 price went from over USD200 to under USD100 - and going further back similar falls occur with surprising regularity.
Edit: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#tgSza1gWMAzm1g20za2gWMAzm2g1920zl (Oops!)
I'm not saying MtGox et al didn't play their part, just that we tend to overemphasise the role of news. MtGox, for example, didn't come as the big surprise many people think it did - people had been expecting MtGox to screw up for some time, and that would have been reflected in the price long before February 2014.
You misunderstood :-) I told that indeed bitcoin is much older than 1 year and this is why problems from science last few months means nothing as bitcoin is much older and stronger in same time ...