WHY the recent rally?

[SgtSpike]

Up until late April, the bitcoin was relatively stable compared to USD.  I want to hear speculation on reasons for the recent continued rally.  Is it rallying because it rallied the day before?  Is it rallying because of popularity (say, an increase in demand for BitCoins after places like Overclock.Net heard of it)?  Other reasons?

[Quadro]

Latest media attention + awaken enthusiasm(1Thash/s atm) + ppl are buying/hoarding.
You better not be around when big players(s) unload.

[SgtSpike]

Latest media attention + awaken enthusiasm(1Thash/s atm) + ppl are buying/hoarding.
You better not be around when big players(s) unload.

[caveden]

I guess recent articles on TIME and Forbes might justify a good part of the rally.

[ribuck]

On 9 April, user u2u3 opened a forum thread about how to buy 200,000 to 400,000 bitcoins "in the next few months" at $2 per coin. This was at a time when the going rate was less than a dollar per coin, and a price of $2 seemed unthinkable for the near-term.

After a brief discussion, u2u3's conclusion was that "Buying up slowly on MtGox is probably the way to go".

Maybe u2u3 got his $400,000 cleared, and has been "buying up slowly on MtGox". MtGox transaction volume shot up on 12 April and has been generally high since then.

[FreeMoney]

Latest media attention + awaken enthusiasm(1Thash/s atm) + ppl are buying/hoarding.
You better not be around when big players(s) unload.

I'm sure there are some big stores of coins sitting with early adopters. They may want to use them at some point. Unless they like to burn their own value they'll do it slowly to get the best price. Each time a big stash gets sold to a bunch of different people the flooding potential is reduced. It's a natural process and I think it takes us to a good stable place.