Quote from: nwfella on August 16, 2014, 06:08:55 AM

imho the recent drop in btc price can be attributed largely to the following:
4.) Fat bag holders that received their coins illegitmately that are trying to get what they can just in case btc's day in the sun is over.
5.) Most merchants that are starting to accept bitcoin you have to understand are basically doing so with the intention of converting it instantly to fiat. Everytime this happens bitcoin price is going to take a hit. Particularly if the Buy order depth on whatever exchange or processor the person is cashing out on is weak.
6.) Overall image of bitcoin suffering pretty bad, at least the majority of the opinions i've been hearing are largely negative. And primarily based in ignorance.

Agreed. But you cannot assume that the bad image of bitcoin is due to "ignorance". To believe in its ultimate success one must believe in several premises, that, in most people's exerience, are quite unlikely...

But one cannot hope to understand why the price is falling now without knowing why it went up from 450$ to 650$ on May/20--Jun/10. So far, this crash is merely undoing that rally. However, when th eprice goes up everybody says "I don't care why", or "that's bitcoin", or give some TA non-explanation, or engage in wishful thinking that it surely is "the next bubble".

The last bubble was due to the opening of the Chinese market, and most everything that has happened to the price since then is clearly due to events and rumors that are relevant to China. There will not be another bubble without the opening of anotherm even bigger market; where is it?

There is no obvious explanation however fror the May/20-Jun/10 rally. That does not mean that there was not an external cause, only that we do not know about it. From the way price moved, it looks like a few Chinese traders went on buying sprees, one at a time, mostly in that 20-day period but also in the next 2 months. My guess is that they got inside information of some future positive development, that prompted them to buy. But now that expectation has somehow deflated, so they are dumping what they bought.

Perhaps they expected the international versions of Huobi (BitVC) and OKCoin (OKCoin.com) to start a new bubble (rather disappointing so far). Perhaps they were XRP owners who heard of Jed McCaleb's plans to sell his billion XRP, expected XRP to crash, and rushed to exchange theirXRP for BTC; only to undo the switch now that Jed struck a deal with Ripple. Or, conversely, perhaps they were people who wanted to buy Jed's XRP, and stocked up on BTC for that. os osmething else.