My assumption would be the following chain of events:
1st - New people exposed through media want in right now, yields High Demand
2nd - People with already comfortable positions in Bitcoin seize opportunity and sell at premium.
3rd - Same New people who bought at the top, probably on impulse, decide it's not worth it and sell.
4th - Sell off creates doubt, doubt becomes fear, fear leads to "Panic" - more people start to sell.
I would agree with all of your observations and add a couple of my own:
1) ALL "currency" (even Gold) is based on some sort of religious (in the technical sense) faith and the resultant "belief" that others share the same belief in the value of whatever.
As a professor of mine observed many years ago: "I will give you a bag of gold coins then sit you outside in the snow for a couple of hours with no clothes. Lets see how long it is before the entire bag of gold is worth trading for a $2 blanket!
2) A truism in any market - what goes UP fast will also come DOWN fast.
3) Fools rush in where angels fear to tread! NEVER NEVER invest money into ANY venture that you cannot afford to lose! NEVER!
and finally:
4) Bitcoin is VERY immature and wherever there is big money there will also be big time thieves - as we are seeing with the Trojan attack.
It is not fun to watch (even less to be victimized), but it is the only way to really work out the security holes. I am old enough to remember when most banks did not even bother with a password on their 300 baud modem link because "no one could possibly duplicate that ..." Yes it was a LONG time ago - before even "Captain Crunch Whistles"!
