I believe the following factors relevant to the recent price movement got underestimated in most analysis:


1. Buying mining hardware served as a kind of "back door" for the investors to the Bitcoin world until quite recently.

This door is now at least half-closed due to the recent price:diffuculty ratio combined with anticipated further hashing power increases (2PH/s expected from CoinTerra in December, 4PH/s from Bitmine before April 2014, just to name the biggest). Those interested in getting larger quantities of Bitcoins can no longer sneak in by buying mining hardware without the risk of having substatially negative short-term return on their investment. Many may see OTC transactions with a premium as a more sensible alternative and I believe that recent price spikes on exchanges were liquidations of such large OTC buy-ins.


2. Any spikes on Mt.Gox got dismissed as not being genuine and attributed only to investors wanting to escape from Gox.

I get a strong feeling that the price actually "wanted" to go up for some time already, but was constantly suppressed by traders believing in the above. Their misguided resistance could only last for so long (or they would have to have indefinitely deep pockets...) and it seems that this volcano which has been "boiling" underneath for quite some time already is now just about to explode!


3. We just broke the 100 EUR barrier!

Many US-based traders tend to overlook Europe, a second major player in this game and how Bitcoin price tends to bounce off or stick to the round figures in EUR:

ATH being so close to 200 EUR
The biggest (so far) rally had a short-term correction around 100 EUR
May 2013 plateau around 100 EUR

It seems that the mythical "whale" is Euro-based!


4. If the price is only a result of blind market forces then why did it "dance around" such a round figure as 100 USD for so long?

Of course because of human psychology attributting something magical to "double digits", "triple digits", etc. (thinking like: "Ouch, we're back to double digits, so cheap! I must buy!"). This way we got kind of sticky to 100 USD (first on Mt.Gox, later on the other exchanges) and only recently we set ourselves free!

Are we gonna repeat the same exercise with prices denominated in EUR and having 100 EUR as the new strong support level? We shall see it soon...