Therefore, we can safely say that this rally was not caused by the "widespread bitcoin adoption". Maybe the reverse is true, but who knows. What is true is that given the big influx of BTC news this february, we should expect more players to enter the market around next month, but who knows if that will drive the price up or down.
Nah, the rally is more likely to have been caused by
current BTC users speculating the effects of an increase in adoption based on press (and a small amount of actual increased adoption b/c of the rally starting in january attracting folks thinking "Ahh shit if only I'd gotten on the wagon in December"
).
The current users would be seeing all the new adoptions and press, and speculating that new users will come on the scene. Obviously, we haven't had time to really see the new users, so I can only logically blame this rally on the current users
expecting new users. It took me almost a month to download & verify the blockchain on a really slow computer (2 weeks), start an ING account and an exchange account, verify with my current bank account, transfer cash, then transfer again to an exchange that accepted ING P2P transfers for free, etc. etc. I was lucky enough to buy chump change at $13 just before the rally.
So, another rally next month? I'm buying.
