Another bearish observation is that btc-e is still adhering to a descending triangle:



Perhaps the manipulators decided to fool people by breaking it on bitstamp and china, but keeping it on btc-e.  

Sell after it has become obvious the bubble is over and you have a much weaker retracement rally that comes fairly close to the high (170 and 995 last time), then start shorting for the post-bubble bear market.

600 would be too bullish for a good bear trap. 

5XX region would create a more effective one for whales to scoop bear coins.

It it does correct substantially, it will not go down much beyond 580-550 otherwise the uptrend is put into question.

It's because of Max Keiser and his influence on them.

It has nothing to do with Russia's view on bitcoin.

All the noob traders are waiting for a big whale volume spike so they feel comfortable buying in.
This staircase pattern with low volume periods is common with bitcoin.

Investments with a tiny market cap grow rapidly if the underlying asset is good and the dumb money is not heavily invested yet. This was the case with bitcoin 4 years ago.
However, as the market cap gets into the billion territory and dumb money is already invested similar %-gains are not to be expected. This is bitcoin today.

Many bitcoin latecomers fail to realize this and out of envy for the very early adopters they keep on touting that bitcoin will keep growing as rapidly as it did in the past and similar nonsense.

I suppose it may take a few months until the permabulls are exhausted and finally get a reality check.

At the moment the risk/reward ratio is not that great in my opinion. At best it will go to about 1000 this year. I do not believe this year will see a 10x bubble.
So, you will only make about 50% at best for 2014 if you buy in at current prices. Given the high risk  of bitcoin (can easily lose 60% in a few days) that reward is not that great.

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/nsamint/nsamint.htm

Why would they ban something they made? 

They are even quoting a certain Mr. Okamoto in this paper.

EU countries have cheap SEPA, while the US mostly use credit cards. One would think that bitcoin to be more popular in the US than the richer EU countries.

Here's a 'big picture' EW analysis using Mt.Gox + Bitstamp price data:

DanV doesn't follow bitcoin fundamentals. He believes news is misleading for the most part and he can get all the fundamentals from the charts.

It would have been nice if it topped out at 1929. 

$750-$950 if this ends up being a bear market rally failing to turn into a bubble.

$3,000-$5,000 if it turns into another bubble.

The new world order won't allow a bunch of libertarian geeks to become that wealthy.

They will roll out their own version sooner or later that will actually become mainstream and push bitcoin back into irrelevance.

In the English language it usually refers to having a million dollars, pounds, or euros. It usually does not mean having a million in currencies with significantly deviant unit values.

^ Interesting response. What about highly speculative momentum stocks far removed from their true value or commodities (like gold, silver etc.)? Trading them is essentially no different from bitcoin from an ethical perspective.

If you make money off of them, someone else lost.

Only forex traders hold fiat currencies for speculative reasons.

So, overall a tiny percentage compared to the typical post-2013 bitcoiner.

The stock market is basically the same thing... it requires an increasing number of greater fools until some kind of panic ensues that crashes the whole thing back to reality (dot.com crash, 2008 etc.).

There's not even enough money on earth to cover the market cap of the US stock market.

So, it's not that unethical compared to mainstream capital markets.

Who is to say that bitcoin will be the mainstream crypto of the future? I'm not convinced that it will be the one.