Ok so I have this thought that maybe the feds are buying up a lot of bitcoins.

as you all know the Federal Reserve Bank has NOTHING to do with the federal government, they are a wholly separate entity that makes these pieces of paper (dollers) in exchange for the governments little pieces of paper (bonds) and these bonds are a promise of repayment WITH interest. so this small groupe of people known as the fed res are in control of the money supply. government doesn't really like it but I wont get in to that here, they do like taxes though. so im thinking (obviously) that the feds do not like this new money, they hate it actually, so they get a couple hundred people and there job is to buy up a lot of bitcoins. but not all at once. maybe a few hundred thousand here and a few thousand there, do this for days and days and weeks and make a few dumps along the way but soon enough they will have an incredible amount of coins and they will dump sell them so fast it will cause a panic sell. they will keep doing this till everyone want out of this horrible up down market.

Just a thought. - they know about bitcoin, they dont like bitcoin, they are doing something right now about bitcoin, they will stop at nothing to destroy bitcoin.

what do you think- how else might this play out?

Thank you for all the information. I will put it to use.

BTW, can you give a simple explanation of what PGP is and how to use it? And do you have any recommendations for related freeware? Thanks.