Nobody took it seriously, but reality was pretty close to that. Back in those days, $100 was like the moon. $1 price fluctuations were huge buy or sell signals and the talk of the wall observer thread. Granted, $1 change over $5 is a 20% increase.
Wow, yeah, that was a pretty crazy graph/prediction. I still think pirate@40 was behind the price increase of $7-$12 (and subsequent fall) in a relatively short time frame. I think he had someone he was either buying or selling coins for, someone that was never revealed, likely due to their involvement in SR at the time. I think pirate did not originally intend to run a Ponzi, either, but ran afoul of this other person and never got a chance to buy back at a lower price because at that point the price had quit falling and the demand had become too great.