Ha ha - I can see that the church of bitcoin is strong as ever.

I agree that we are in Chinese hands. I think that the MMM pyramid was the greatest factor in the pump - I would like to hear from some Chinese users if MMM China  is already saturated or not.

"Price had it's peak at November which was at $504, after which it corrected to around $460 in the beginning of December. That held until very recently, the 7-day high being at $456."

Oh - you only forgot that it corrected to 300.38 between 504 and 460 - but yeah beside that you are 100% correct.

"Potential catalysts for bitcoin price volatility this week include the release of US retail sales, PPI, and consumer sentiment data on Friday. "

Oh come one! Do they just copy crap from one analysis to another?

This is meaningless without the context.

That big upside is 17 dollars.

There are multiple feedback loops - both positive and negative - this is why a constant demand pressure can result in an oscillating price behaviour.

Look at the run up to 500 - it was very smooth with no pullbacks - exactly what I would imagine to happen when there was a constant up pressure that would eat the pullbacks. But it was super-exponential (it looks crazy even on logarithmic scale) if it was to be continued it would quickly grow past $1 million (or any other big number) - it had to stop at some point. And because there were no natural support levels when it stopped and eventually a pullback was initiated it went very deep. Then it started again. All of this is not very verifiable - it is just a story - but for lack of data this is how I interpret it for now.

It is pretty big: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http%3A%2F%2Fmmmglobal.org (in comparison: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http%3A%2F%2Fbitcointalk.org). It it looks like it started gaining popularity in August (see also: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=mmmglobal&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-1).

And it works primarily in bitcoins (because of the easy transfers probably). I think it is a very good explanation of why BTC broke 300 in October and then shoot to 500 - this required some new interest in bitcoin and MMM is a very good explanation for that. Also the correction on Christmas is very well correlated with the alleged collapse of the MMM-China scheme (this is from the link in my original post - I would like to see some confirmation of that).

https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/mmm-global-republic-of-bitcoin-cryptos-next-scandal

MMM Global uses bitcoins primarily - that generates demand for BTC. The hard part is to estimate how big it is. But the first MMM pyramid was estimated to about $ 1 billion - so this might be significant.

When it crashes there will be three negative effects on bitcoin price - one is the reduced demand, two is the damage in image, three is that in a quick time many people will try to cash out their earned BTC.

https://www.google.pl/search?q=bitcoin+mmm

Another piece that I found: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3zctni/for_those_wondering_how_much_of_an_effect_that/

No source.

I wish I knew Chinese.

Bullish or bearish?

I think it is inevitable that we talk our own position. After all if we believe it will go down - then we sell, and if we believe it will go up then we buy - so if we are honest we'll always talk our books. But it gets somehow unbalanced here.

There are some theories that it was MMM that pushed the BTC price in the recent months - so if MMM gets into trouble - this might mean a BTC correction.

There are some strange announcements: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=972278662821447&id=100001179666580

Anyone has better sources about this?

Triple top is kind of forced interpretation. I would rather expect this to be a triangle - and break in the direction of previous trend - that is up.

I don't think there will be a double top - sure there will be a lot of resistance - but people are expecting that. Last time 500 was a really crazy target so when it started dropping it could not find bottom - now traders are more accustomed to thinking that it might in fact get back to 1000 and above.

  - just speculating

Brick and Mortgage? Is that a new English idiom?

Yeah - it looks rather desperate - I guess it is was a slow time for the journalist.

I think the OP confused btc-e with bitfinex.

Maybe this:



http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg60zczsg2013-11-17zeg2013-11-21ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv ?

According to my calculations for 2.5 leveraged (default at bitfinex) positions bought between 400 and 500 the margin call price is 280-350. So if it falls below 350 we can see some of these.