What chain of events made bitcoin crash/drop?

[opentoe]

I've been constantly reading these forums, and also other content online that I could find to figure out what started the bitcoin crash of 2013. Well, not completely crash but it certainly was a show stopper. When most exchanges ceased operations and things just went dark, I think we could label it as a "crash". Were people jumping out their windows to their death, I don't know. I haven't heard anyone committing suicide from losing money with bitcoin but you never know.

So what was the chain of events that led to bitcoin dropping so much? It had to start somewhere, right? Was instawallet? Was is news media attention? Was is the influx of new users at Mt. Gox? Could it have been all related? I'm curious as to what others have to say.

[Elxiliath]

First there was a huge increase in users regeristing with My.Gox which started to cause the system to lag, then there was a huge sell order in the range of 5000 bitcoins which caused the price to go down as they were sold and created latency as it filled current buy orders.  That initial large drop greatly affected the price causing nervous traders to sell because of this and the current price at the time.  The continuous sell from nervous sellers, selling lower and lower to get out from under there bitcoinx crashed the market.  Then Mt.Gox shut down trading and has been repeatedly hit with DDoS attacks causing further doubt in the trading system most base bitcoin prices on.

[bcminer9]

Basically ^. And this question has nothing to do with mining...

[opentoe]

Basically ^. And this question has nothing to do with mining...

Then why would you read it, and then even spend time to respond to it? Get a life will ya.
A mod will move it if they want to.

[Stephen Gornick]

Could it have been all related?

Well, nearly everything that goes parabolic has to stop.  If it had stopped at $80 it would have crashed after that rise too.  It just went way, way much further than most anyone would have imagined.

There are a ton of people who have an opinion one way or another.

More than 1.2 million BTC have traded since we saw $266, an incredibly huge quantity. 

But one thing nobody is discussing is the impact of the discontinuance of the redeemable codes at Mt. Gox.

A lot of over-the-counter trading used these.   A lot of exchange arbitrage occurring used these as well.

That may have contributed to the rise in the exchange rate prior to April 10th.   Those who had USDs and used redeemable codes for withdrawals needed to move the funds out before April 10th and traded at some point.   Every trade has a counterparty so suddenly there was a lot of MTG USDs received by traders that had exchanged cash for them.   It is possible they were the ones buying bitcoins using these newly acquired funds.

So that might explain the buying that was occurring even though the parabolic rise was glaringly obvious.  Simply when that activity stopped (when issuance of new redeemable codes stopped) then the absence of new buying simply let gravity bring down the exchange rate, and that happened swiftly.

[Akka]

Could it have been all related?

Well, nearly everything that goes parabolic has to stop.  If it had stopped at $80 it would have crashed after that rise too.  It just went way, way much further than most anyone would have imagined.

There are a ton of people who have an opinion one way or another.

More than 1.2 million BTC have traded since we saw $266, an incredibly huge quantity. 

But one thing nobody is discussing is the impact of the discontinuance of the redeemable codes at Mt. Gox.

A lot of over-the-counter trading used these.   A lot of exchange arbitrage occurring used these as well.

That may have contributed to the rise in the exchange rate prior to April 10th.   Those who had USDs and used redeemable codes for withdrawals needed to move the funds out before April 10th and traded at some point.   Every trade has a counterparty so suddenly there was a lot of MTG USDs received by traders that had exchanged cash for them.   It is possible they were the ones buying bitcoins using these newly acquired funds.

So that might explain the buying that was occurring even though the parabolic rise was glaringly obvious.  Simply when that activity stopped (when issuance of new redeemable codes stopped) then the absence of new buying simply let gravity bring down the exchange rate, and that happened swiftly.

Interesting,

this would indeed explain or at least contibute to  the parabolic rise that started End of March.

If we skip the last 3 Week and look over the growth of the last 3 Month (Januar - End of March) we should currently be at 75 - 100 $ Price.

Still overrated IMO, but we are indeed in this area.

[Anonymouss]

Could it have been all related?

Well, nearly everything that goes parabolic has to stop.  If it had stopped at $80 it would have crashed after that rise too.  It just went way, way much further than most anyone would have imagined.

There are a ton of people who have an opinion one way or another.

More than 1.2 million BTC have traded since we saw $266, an incredibly huge quantity. 

But one thing nobody is discussing is the impact of the discontinuance of the redeemable codes at Mt. Gox.

A lot of over-the-counter trading used these.   A lot of exchange arbitrage occurring used these as well.

That may have contributed to the rise in the exchange rate prior to April 10th.   Those who had USDs and used redeemable codes for withdrawals needed to move the funds out before April 10th and traded at some point.   Every trade has a counterparty so suddenly there was a lot of MTG USDs received by traders that had exchanged cash for them.   It is possible they were the ones buying bitcoins using these newly acquired funds.

So that might explain the buying that was occurring even though the parabolic rise was glaringly obvious.  Simply when that activity stopped (when issuance of new redeemable codes stopped) then the absence of new buying simply let gravity bring down the exchange rate, and that happened swiftly.

Interesting,

this would indeed explain or at least contibute to  the parabolic rise that started End of March.

If we skip the last 3 Week and look over the growth of the last 3 Month (Januar - End of March) we should currently be at 75 - 100 $ Price.

Still overrated IMO, but we are indeed in this area.

Said this over and over again, it will continue to drop until people can get it in their head it is a currency not stock shares. It can never succeed until this happens, it will just rise up to fast so no one will use it to buy products because 1 day you can be paying $100 and the next you just paid $200 due to the bull market.

[Stephen Gornick]

it will just rise up to fast so no one will use it to buy products because 1 day you can be paying $100 and the next you just paid $200 due to the bull market.

Care to answer why FedEx and UPS have dropped off packages today then?  (ordered a week ago today, as the exchange rate was rising).

Incidentally, I've not made a single purchase using bitcoins since the selloff began.

This would seem to be counter to the hoarding argument.  I make more purchases with bitcoins when I think the exchange rate is too high.