Maybe. I know nothing of margin trading beyond the basic idea.  Those calls that expired at the end of May, when were they made, and for how much?  Was their volume compatible with the amounts involved in the rise?

@Mimitech suggested the Dell adoption as the causing event, and @walsoraJ pointed out Jed McCaleb's threat to sell his huge holding of XRP.  Maybe too.  However, I would first look for a cause in China.  Could that be the opening of the international branches of Huobi and OKCoin? Or some leak from the government? 

Yes, many people here do not agree with my opinions.  I read theirs. So?

The language may be a failed attempt to be funny but the opinion is quite serious.  What we saw since May/20 was a sudden rise from ~440$ to ~640 that no one can (or wants to) explain, then seven weeks of wandering around 600$, then a sudden drop back to ~470, that no one can (or wants to) explain either.   Why is it absurd to consider all that as a single event?

I have proposed a partial explanation: starting May/20, a few people got wind of something that made them buy all they could.  Now those people changed their minds, and dumped everything back.  So the price got back to where it was.  Is this so much sillier than the narwhals(*) that people have been discussing here?

(*) a large sea mammal reputed to be a cross between a whale and a unicorn.

Ladies and Gentlemen, you have just watched /The May 2014 Bitcoin Bubble/, complete, performed by the Peking Opera Buffa Company.  Now back to our regular programming.

Is that something you falsely believed that you had looked up in an imaginary dictionary?

Could he be referring to an illusion of continuity that sometimes prevails in this thread, in spite of our best efforts to make totally pointless?

Not much I am afraid, why don't you google "several days before the meaning suddenly came to me"?

Is that a reference to "A, B, ........................", which was a postcard that Iva Matrix once sent to Martin Gardner?

Since that is obviously not "a question with a dot at the end", did you mean to write "is THAT a question with a dot at the end, or what?"?

Yeah, I cannot deny that my views on bitcoin and bitcoiners were noticeably amplified by that incident, in spite of my efforts to maintain an objective view of the topic.   

... that actually should be "code not signed by Satoshi labs".  A hacker who wants to load malicious code into your Trezor would have to get hold of their signing key, or trick them into signing his code, or trick you into ignoring the device's warning.

You mean, help pay for Winklevum and Winklevee's new Ferrari?  Sorry, I am not smart enough for that.

If it is pointless, as you say, why is it so popular?

If I were forced to predict the bottom, under pain of having emacs removed from my computer, I would say around 450$.  That is what the price was on May/19, before the buying sprees that lifted it to 650$.  That guess assumes that the traders who did all that buying have changed their minds and are dumping all that they bought.

I was referring to recent events about Coinbase and LBTC.

About the bankless ATMs, I have read the article, and pointed out one problem (fake bills being input by a customer and dispensed to another).

When I started college and became a trainee at the univeristy's computing center, my first task was to help other students find bugs in their programs.  I have been looking for bugs in programs almost every day, often many hours a day, for the last 46 years.  I cannot shake off the habit any more...

Consider a place that sells bitcoins "off the shelf" and runs out of BTC.  If they expect the price to fall several percentage points "soon", it is better for them to turn clients away than to buy more BTC to replenish their stock.

Conversely, if they have a stock of BTC and expect the price to rise significantly "soon",  they will be tempted to tell their customers that their stock ran out.

So, if those reports of (BTC sellers running out of stock) are true, which explanation will be the true one?

That was before they invented television and Google and the takedown notice...

That's my bet too.  They are not amateurs at their profession.

Thanks! One more for the count of "posts about nothing but @JorgeStolfi".

Watch out @Fonzie! You are ahead, but not clear yet...

(This post counts for us both, unfortunately.) 

Beware that it is only 7:30 am Sunday in China.  The rise from 3100 to 3200 CNY happened in mostly after 04:00 am.   Will the late-risers confirm it, or reverse it?