Do you seriously believe that Cyprus was main cause of the bubble?

[lucas.sev]

You really think that it was cyprus that caused the bubble? This topic is inspired by talk with a friend from work who is from Cyprus and spent all of last year in Cyprus, he had no idea what bitcoins are - and he is working as a developer.

My personal belief is that once ATH was passed it was just a hysteria and lots of media attention that caused the bubble

Conclusion: another country going Cyprus style will do nothing to BTC. The only reason why it would do anything is guys over in the "land of the free" thinking "oh, another country going Cyprus, lets buy btc" but it won't be enough to go past 266.

[ElectricMucus]

Spot on.

[Miz4r]

Cyprus did accelerate the bubble, but it wasn't the cause of it. It has nothing to do with people in Cyprus suddenly buying bitcoins, but how the rest of the world saw how their money in the banks may no longer be as safe as they had once thought. And then you have the speculators who saw this as well and anticipated the price rising further and faster because of the loss of trust in the banking system. All these things together with the media attention just accelerated the whole process. The real cause of the bubble was the halving of the block reward imo, it just took a while for the ball to really start rolling and developing into a bubble. Cyprus was just a nice push.

[MoreFun]

But media attention didn't bring new people and money to the game to create even bigger bubble, but it stimulated "old" players to buy more. Generally it is a long way since getting to know bitcoin to invest a lot of your money (there are steps and process which require time).

[lucas.sev]

But media attention didn't bring new people and money to the game to create even bigger bubble, but it stimulated "old" players to buy more. Generally it is a long way since getting to know bitcoin to invest a lot of your money (there are steps and process which require time).

Of course it did. Bitcoin is not only bitcoinforum.

[MoreFun]

You don't get it. Media attention was high at the end of March, do you think that average investor or speculator (who was first introduced to bitcoin during this media press) was able to invest lots of his money in 14 days??? You wish... It is a process like I said.

You should bold the whole sentence till the first comma not only first part.

[Gleason]

I love how you assume its only people in the "land of the free" who will think this way.

[manfred]

Cyprus did't start the bubble it just added wood to the fire. The hard fact is that u couln't fill up your shopping basket with bitcoins at the time. If u wanted anything u needed to have cash in your hand. To this day u have a hard time spending a coin for something u want in Cyprus. A nice graphic card is not something of great need in a crises and on the market square a bitcoin in your pocked want get u far. I am not sure if there will be a bubble mania ver.3. The longer the current system is on life support the better for bitcoin. If the entire system collapses tomorrow bitcoins wont help, simple as that. In my opinion the system got plenty of life left yet.....

[Coinseeker]

It was just like the SD sale news.  Self fullfilling prophecy.  I'm always amused that people think that all these people came to Bitcoin because they suddenly trusted Bitcoin over the banks.    Get serious.  Your average person may not like or trust the banks but they trust them far more than some "hacker coin" from the "dark web".  The majority of new people who came to Bitcoin after Cypress were speculators, who saw the media attention of the bubble and came to make some money.  Pure greed.  Nothing more.  I'm fairly computer savvy and it still took me more than 2 weeks to get my head wrapped around Bitcoin and finally pull the trigger on buying a couple. I also wasn't going through a crisis.  You really think I would be learning about Bitcoin during something like that?

All the rest of it was current users convincing themselves, people in Cypress and around the world would start buying Bitcoin because by magic, I guess, they would hear about Bitcoin and just drop everything to learn how to buy them.  Delusions of the highest order but enough of a delusion to get current users paying up to $266 per BTC, because they had convinced themselves the $1000+ BTC train was leaving without them.  I'll be waiting for the next world crisis, so the Bitcoin community can create another bubble based purely on their own speculations and greed, nothing more.

[wachtwoord]

In the long run, situations such as in Cyprus have a positive influence on the price of Bitcoin. Short term there is no way to know what caused the bubble although it certainly wasn't one thing.

[phatsphere]

1. this last major "bubble" was not a bubble, because we have a much higher price than before right now.

2. cyprus happened afterwards, therefore a no, too.

3. the last price spike started on its own, likely caused by a non-linear network effect (you can look up things like "perculation theory" in your favourite search engine) … and only during its development the news stories came in.

[BitPirate]

Why so simplistic?

General financial stability around the world will contribute to Bitcoin price, and did in the Cyprus case.

Of course it wasn't people in Cyprus physically buying BTC. I don't think many people actually thought that. What makes you think they did?

[mp420]

I was calling bubble when price passed $18. The price action was insane already in January.

Real world economy has nothing to do with the recent (and ongoing) bubble. It's all about bubble mechanics: Publicity creates demand, demand raises price, price hikes create publicity.

I think the market has matured somewhat. In mature markets bubbles are slower. My guess is that the aftermath will take years instead of months this time.

[chufchuf]

Cyprus wasn't the cause, Argentina wasn't the cause... what rubbish.

What happened was common sense. Anyone all over the world realises their money is safer in BTC than in a bank. It can be kept inside the brain, just that is worth trillions. You're safer with it if you're poor and if you're rich.

How it could have remained so low for the first years is something to think about.

[chufchuf]

Spot on.

[ElectricMucus]

I can't watch that. 

[manfred]

Cyprus wasn't the cause, Argentina wasn't the cause... what rubbish.

What happened was common sense. Anyone all over the world realises their money is safer in BTC than in a bank. It can be kept inside the brain, just that is worth trillions. You're safer with it if you're poor and if you're rich.

How it could have remained so low for the first years is something to think about.

Proceed with caution. At the end of the day its just software and because today u are unaware (or does not exist) a bug, scam...... all will be well tomorrow.
Also, there is still a lot of unknowns like the 1996 NSA Blueprint for anonymous electronic cash:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/nsamint/nsamint.htm

As u can see in the References it goes all the way back to 1988 (Untraceable Electronic Cash, Advances in Cryptology CRYPTO '88)

[Raize]

Cyprus didn't cause the bubble at all. I don't even know if the event itself had a big deal to do with it either. It just happened to be the latest favorable news around the time the bubble was in full swing, so everyone kind of associated the bubble with Cyprus. As other have stated, a few of us knew something was up when Bitcoin passed $16-$20 with literally no sign of stopping.

[jspielberg]

Cypress was a convenient event for the media to latch onto.

But lets face it... Economics is such a crappy science that not only can it not predict the future -  it can't predict the past.  We are still squabbling about the cause and cure of the Great Depression.

I think any events that cause turmoil for the "real" markets send capital to where it seems like it will get a return.  The timing was such that BTC was like cabbage patch kids... ahh... beanie babies... tickle-me elmos... ahh.. houses during the early naught's, autographed copies of jspielberg's missives (okay I made the last one up).

Anyway... greed and speculation was what caused the bubble... the rest is just lazy journalism.

[Asteral]

The rally had already began two months before the Cyprus news hit the waves...Cyprus just happened to be in the news at the time Bitcoin was gaining media attention. No doubt Cyprus played a part in the bubble, but it was only one of many factors.

The main reason for the bubble, I believe, was simply herd instinct and a fear of missing out on something that could change their lives forever if they didn't buy immediately. Just like in the 2011 bubble, many bought simply because the longer they delay the less bitcoins they will be able to buy. Higher prices lead to others panic buying which leads to even higher prices etc. The amount of media attention also was a huge factor which fueled the bubble as new people outside of the community were brought into the market.

My 2 cents.