why did bitcoin get so powerful so fast -- not just price -- media , etc

[the founder]

I was looking over some of the stats.

About 3 minutes ago the Bitcoin Pizza Index reached $1.1 million.
The overall size of the bitcoin economy is now valued at  $1,217,355,181.52

We're getting articles,  tv spots, etc.. CNBC,  CNN, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Ect.

fairly amazing stuff.... 

[ECore]

1. I think it's a snowball effect.  As the price goes up, more people want to benefit from it, and more stores are seeing the benefits from every angle.

2. We all see that we now have the ability to defeat the bankers.

3.  People are enjoying spending money without having the watchful eyes of the government over their backs.

4.  Bitcoin is being viewed as a safe harbor for their money.

5.  People are excited about it and are spreading the bitcoin gospel by word of mouth.

well..that's all my brain can handle right not...

[sunnankar]

1. I think it's a snowball effect.

Yep, the virtuous cycle at work.

[gollum]

I dont like this price curve it is going up too much and too fast.

And even if this is not a bubble, it is bad for small entrepreneurs that bitcoin becomes big so fast, suddenly we will have competition from big boys outside the bitcoin community.
Before the big rally and the FinCen rule, bitcoin was a gray zone and we still had time to play around and create our own ecosystem around bitcoin. Now we got to compete with everyone else since they are now accepting bitcoin.

[Mike Christ]

I dont like this price curve it is going up too much and too fast.

And even if this is not a bubble, it is bad for small entrepreneurs that bitcoin becomes big so fast, suddenly we will have competition from big boys outside the bitcoin community.
Before the big rally and the FinCen rule, bitcoin was a gray zone and we still had time to play around and create our own ecosystem around bitcoin. Now we got to compete with everyone else since they are now accepting bitcoin.

In other words, welcome to the real world, Bitcoin!

[WiW]

Actually, if you look at the all time chart and assume exponential growth (check the log scale), you can see that the price rise is not that exceptional. The press gets serious because there's enough critical mass (of people interested) + enough nominal scale (0.01 to 1 < 1 to 100).

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g150zm2g25zvzl

Also, everyone's a sucker for exponential graphs on linear scales making "hockey stick" figures.

[BubbleBoy]

As you can deduce from my presence in your midst, we're into a full blown speculative bubble again. No one knows how to price Bitcoins and there's no fundamentals to speak of - perfect setup for media-induced irrational exuberance.

To my shame I've actually made a small fortune this time around, simply by holding to some coins that were almost worthless when I acquired them to play around with the technology. I fell dirty to have participated in this "greater fool" hunt, but I think I will survive.

[yoniassia]

Conspiracy ?

[majamalu]

As you can deduce from my presence in your midst, we're into a full blown speculative bubble again. No one knows how to price Bitcoins and there's no fundamentals to speak of - perfect setup for media-induced irrational exuberance.

To my shame I've actually made a small fortune this time around, simply by holding to some coins that were almost worthless when I acquired them to play around with the technology. I fell dirty to have participated in this "greater fool" hunt, but I think I will survive.

I remember you: You sold all your bitcoins at USD 2. What's your agenda?

[edd]

I dont like this price curve it is going up too much and too fast.

Those were almost my exact words when it jumped from $9 to $11.

[BubbleBoy]

I remember you: You sold all your bitcoins at USD 2. What's your agenda?

You are making a confusion, I've only recently started to speculate real money on the BTC price - and even that by accident. What I've indeed said at the height of the first bubble was something like "relax, there will be plenty of buying opportunities bellow 1$" to folks who thought they lost the get rich quick train. I think the lowpoint was around 2 USD, so I was 50% right

As for this time around, there's no telling where the bubble will peak, it's an entirely stochastic phenomenon. What we now for sure is that the "dumb money" flow will eventually stop and a precipitous correction will ensue. No "agenda", just taking the pulse of the community to better sync my divestment and hopefully learn something from the smarter people around here.

[Dr.Steve]

There are more buyers than sellers.
The dumb money hasn't even yet to arrive.
The dumb money arrives when it makes the front page of the Wall Street J or NY Time Business section.

There are many very rich (in fiat) folks who want to stash their cash. They are finding ways into the system.
If you ask 10,000 people if they heard of bitcoin, how many say yes?
Of those, how many have purchased/mined?

"This time it's different?"

[BigJohn]

On the other hand, if you believe that the world has bee SCREAMING for a viable alternative to the status quo for nearly two decades, then the current run-up might look like Bitcoin finally approximating its true value as a scarce token than can be used to sign contracts.

I do believe that, but I'm afraid the facts just don't spell out that this moment has arrived.

We just have to ask ourselves some questions. Bitcoin went from $20 around Feb 1st, to $125 April 1st, which is a 625% increase in 2 months. That means that for the theory that the moment has come for Bitcoin to hold true, the amount of customers have suddenly skyrocketed by a whopping 625% in those 2 months. Or alternatively, that the people who were already into Bitcoin now really want it 625% more, enough to drop the supply of circulating Bitcoins by roughly 84%. What drove this increase in demand? I can see nothing that would explain it. Some people say the European situation. Fine, but then that doesn't match up with the decrease we're observing in the price of Gold/Silver. And considering how hard it is to actually get Bitcoins compared to Gold/Silver, I would think that if Bitcoin's moment has finally come, then also Fiat's time is at an end, and Gold/Silver prices would skyrocket as well. We're just not at that point yet.

There's another explanation though. For the price to go up so dramatically, it could be that someone is trying price manipulation by some kind of pump&dump. But since we've seen a 625% price increase, that would have to correspond to some ridiculously huge decrease in the Bitcoin supply, which seems equally unlikely. Someone would have to have some massive buying power to buy and hold that many Bitcoins. So using a bit of Occam's Razor, it seems most likely that this is simply a bunch of speculators with too much money on their hands who are feeding off of each other. AKA, a bubble.

Again, I really do believe Bitcoin will have its moment and people will use it as a viable alternative. I just don't see anything that says this moment is now. There's no event that I'm seeing that explains the whopping increase in the price of Bitcoin we've been seeing lately. It's most likely a bubble, unless I'm missing something big.

[dg2010]

At last some common sense....

In my opinion this recent price rise is quite clearly to do with speculation, and nothing to do with mainstream adoption of Bitcoin, because the price rise is moving too quick for it to be attributed to that. It simply isn't long enough for people to understand and start buying Bitcoins at such a rate to cause such an dramatic increase.

I think this is simply a case of people hoarding their coins, waiting for a big payday, people like us buying additional Bitcoins hoping to cash in.

2 months ago I bought £500 worth at something like £18. I jumped out at £33 with the block chain fork, that was already too much of a bubble for me. Now it's over £90. Are you insane? There simply isn't enough trade going on to justify such a high price. This is artificially inflated and as such it's soon going to reach a tipping point.

Nobody wants to talk about this presumably because you all have bit coins stashed away and are hoping for a big pay day. Just don't all try and cash out at once.

[alexeft]

You are missing some very important factors, namely:

1) The Cyprus bank deposit confiscation. Everyone is scared now.
2) Canada passing legislation to confiscate deposits in case of bank failure. More fear
3) Australia requesting the above legislation. Even more fear.
4) New Zealand, the same. Even more fear.
5) US, EU and just about every other country printing money like crazy.

In essence, there is no safe haven for money other than gold, silver and the new kid on the block, bitcoin.

People are just starting to realize that we are living among bank ruins that we will have to pay for.

[BigJohn]

You are missing some very important factors, namely:

1) The Cyprus bank deposit confiscation. Everyone is scared now.

True. Which means you would have seen a spike in Gold/Silver first. If everyone suddenly flocked to Bitcoin, then you'd see a hell of a lot more client download coming in from those areas. Mind you, this is a now 725% increase. That's just freaking huge. You should see massive numbers, as in the hundreds of percents, in other areas related to Bitcoin. Forum subscriptions, client downloads, etc.

2) Canada passing legislation to confiscate deposits in case of bank failure. More fear
3) Australia requesting the above legislation. Even more fear.
4) New Zealand, the same. Even more fear.
5) US, EU and just about every other country printing money like crazy.

Again, these things would have been led by a precious metal rise first, Bitcoin later. Or at least simultaneously. You sure wouldn't have seen a precious-metals price decrease.

In essence, there is no safe haven for money other than gold, silver and the new kid on the block, bitcoin.

People are just starting to realize that we are living among bank ruins that we will have to pay for.

Yeah, I'd totally agree with that one.

[alexeft]

There is just a small difference. Metal supply is inflated more than bitcoin is destined to. I heard something about some new gold mines pumping out a helluva lot of it. Bitcoin on the other hand...nope!!!

[wopwop]

There is just a small difference. Metal supply is inflated more than bitcoin is destined to. I heard something about some new gold mines pumping out a helluva lot of it. Bitcoin on the other hand...nope!!!

true bitcoin is totally different than gold we'll see huge profits

[BigJohn]

I'd love to see some numbers on just how much gold was dug up in the last couple of months.

If the assumption is that there's indeed a panic and a flight away from the fiat, then people are indeed buying gold and silver, but the price increase is masked by inflation. I think it's still safe to assume that people would flock to metals first, so then the ~600%-700% increase we're seeing in Bitcoin is only a small fraction of what's happening in precious metals. Which means they're digging up gold in amounts that are several times the amount of gold that's ever been dug up in history. Extremely unlikely scenario, if not impossible.

[wopwop]

Bitcoin's rise is based on hard fundamentals