There's Coinut, for vanilla and binary, European options. Quedex doesn't seem to have fully launched yet, so Coinut is the only choice for vanillas.

There are plenty of sites that do binaries but not vanilla, but I don't really pay much attention to them.

Not an idiot, just a newbie :p You won't be able to vote in polls until your level has increased - I can't remember which level, but possibly regular "Member" (possibly "Full member", though).

Uh, doesn't the new ATH have to be $1200 or higher? If price doesn't get beyond the current ATH we won't have reached a new All Time High, surely?

Well, in the UK at least you'd still have to pay Capital Gains Tax (if your BTC holding has appreciated in value since you purchased them).

VAT - "value added tax", the equivalent of Government Sales Tax in other jurisdictions, predates the current obsession with AML and KYC. In Europe we pay VAT when buy a bar of chocolate - our financial details aren't recorded, it's just an additional cost on top of the sale price. Not paying VAT when we buy or sell BTC won't impact existing AML and KYC requirements in the EU at all, in the same way not paying VAT when we buy gold won't impact AML/KYC compliance.

There's a premium on Chinese exchanges, suggesting that China is driving this. This article has some ideas about what China's up to, but it doesn't mention a relaxation of exchange controls (people can once again deposit CNY direct from their bank to a Chinese exchange). The Chinese exchanges are extremely keen to emphasise that none of this is due to people evading capital controls, which makes me think that it is very important to Chinese exchanges that they not be seen to be helping people evade capital controls...!

I have no idea how high the current run will go. I can see two possible scenarios - (1) it continues into next year, as halving approaches, and we see prices that are orders of magnitude higher than we're used to, before crashing, or (2) in the next month or two there's a crash, before another run up prior to the halving. There are other possibilities, of course, but with peoples' expectations around the halving I think demand will stay high.

I believe the importance Willy 1.0 is over-stated, and that November 2013 was due in large part to China. Willy 2.0? Sure, probably - nothing has happened to prevent the Chinese exchanges behaving like it's the Wild West (same as it's always been for Bitcoin) and there have been some amazing arbitrage opportunities over the past few weeks where I'd expect to see automated trades. But the current rise (and previous rises) ties in too neatly with the PRC "un-banning" BTC again.

tl;dr - almost certainly, but it's probably not what's driving the rise. I'm sceptical about it being even a major factor.

I'm OK with separate blockchains, and you hint at why in your post! I don't find it surprising that banks want their own private blockchain, any more than ISPs wanted their own private networks and internets. And just as private internets joined The Internet, I see private blockchains joining The Blockchain once consumers start asking about the advantages of The Blockchain - security, convenience, etc.

Over the past 10 days BTC/USD (on Bitstamp) has risen on average by 2.3% per day. If (and obviously that's a big-unlikely-if) that rate  is maintained we'll reach $80k in 239 days - late June 2016.

I'm fairly certain it was their opinion - they start their post with "I think", and the subject ends with a question-mark. I assumed they were asking whether we agreed with their analysis of the BTC/CNY chart.

Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that 21 August 2015 was Bitcoin's heyday, nor that Localbitcoins should be taken too seriously as a tool for price discovery.

Like other posters, I took "heyday" to refer to late 2013, when BTC/USD was approaching/reaching $1000 on multiple exchanges.

Localbitcoins isn't an exchange - it brings together traders wanting to make over-the-counter trades. There tends to be a premium for OTC trades. Some of those trades are "person-to-person" (P2P), and attract an additional premium (presumably for the anonymity cash trades provide). The >$10k trade we saw on 21 August was most likely a product of a P2P trade. (I can only speculate what the buyer's motivation was).

I'm unconvinced by the "selling for Christmas" argument. December 2011 saw a rise; December 2012 was flat, preceding a rise in January 2013 (to the >$10 then-ATH); December 2013 did see a fall (following the November 2013 >$1000 ATH); and December 2014 was mostly flat (but did precede a substantial drop in January 2015).

...and that's without even considering what percentage of today's market even regards December as "holiday season".

Blimey! You seem to have accepted the new over-300 order remarkably quickly! I'd have thought you'd wait until the mid 200s at least before calling a dead-cat bounce.

Sure. War-time can be a good opportunity to speculate. It doesn't follow that every thing that happens in war-time is an opportunity for speculators, however.

True. I don't believe the weapons were transported from Syria to Sinai via anywhere, however.

Yeah, I'm pretty sceptical about this having any effect on BTC.  Russia have been attacking ISIS in Syria for some time, we know what relations between ISIS and Russia are like and this doesn't tell us anything new. A civilian airliner flying over a war-zone was shot down - it's a tragedy, it's an outrage, but it won't have any effect on most markets, and certainly not BTC.

A whole week to respond to an event of this magnitude?

ISIS don't get along with Russia? THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING. USD 500 by the end of the day?

I can't believe it that would take that long for the markets to respond to a global economy-changing event of this magnitude.