Please look at the charts and draw your own conclusions.

They have been proving that since last October.  They are proving it right now... 

On second thoughts, I understand from Huobi's 04-17 13:10 note that Huobi's TOPUP cards are not issued by Huobi, but by a separate "card company".  Also, I think that they are not recharged through a 3rd party payment processor (which may have been used before Apr/01), but by clients sending bank wire transfers to the card company's bank account.

Could anyone confirm this please?  Thanks..

I fully agree.

I did change my signature from "rather skeptical" to "very skeptical" and stated some of the reasons here, buried somewhere in the past 2000 pages or so.   I won't go through them again, it would only trigger the same nasty responses.

If you care to know, for me the probability of bitcoin (THIS bitcoin) succeeding is positive but rather small; if it fails, I have no idea how long that ill take, and how the price will evolve until then.

I never was an "analyst", so-called or otherwise-called.  As for being a cave bear, my prediction for after Apr/15 (posted here on Mar/29) was  "3500--3700 CNY or  580--610 USD". 

But I already got it, anyone who does not believe in 1,000,000,000 USD/BTC by next week is a bear...

Your guess is as good as mine, but I understand that they found a way to reactivate their TOPUP cards. These are an alternative way for clients to deposit CNY in their Huobi accounts, distinct from sending bank wire deposits to the Huobi corporate account.  I don't know exactly how those cards work, but it seems that they asre issued by Huobi and can be "recharged" through a 3rd party payment processor.  Huobi used to have that option, but they suspended it voluntarily on Apr/01 or tehreabouts.

[FUD]
That Huobi note is a small positive development, but could be an attempt to push up morale and provide an emergency workaround before bad news that may come tomorrow Apr/18.  Like a sailor knocking at every passenger's cabin door and handing over a life jacket and a bottle of shark repellant "with compliments of the Capitan, just to improve your safety even more". 
[/FUD]

OKCoin seems to be inviting everybody to some open house party on April 19, to among other things, "Understand the overall situation and development trend of Bitcoin industry":
https://www.okcoin.com/t-1008403.html
Who/what is a/the "bitcoin goddess" (比特币女神)?  (Could THAT be the secret of their huge volume?  )

EDIT: Well, the West has Bitcoin Jesus, so there is no reason to despair yet. 

The rally could be due to this notice just posted to Huobi:
(Google Translate, with "Fire currency/coin net" --> Huobi.com")

Indeed there have been "mini-rallies" at about about 01:30 pm local time on Apr/14, Apr/15, and today Apr/17.

It could be that someone with lots of money but not much experience finished his lunch quickly and used the rest of their lunch break to check the bitcoin price. Seeing that it was up from the previous day, he bought more, one chunk at a time, until the price went up to what he thought was too high..

It could also be bullish news or comments being posted daily at lunch time on some Chinese blog, which is read by only a few traders.

Me neither... 

By the way, what is (are) the prossible explanation(s) for the April 2013 rally?

For whatever it is worth, here are price plots of the April 2013 and November 2013 "bubbles":


The plots were clipped from bitcoincharts.com and colorized with gimp to improve contratst.  The left one was stretched vertically 8% with gimp to get both on the same vertical log scale (~1208 pixels/decade).  The strokes show the high/low intervals in each 3-day period.

For a better comparison one should use the mean price, weighted with a smoothing kernel.  May do that.

Fulano esté mentindo para Siclano sempre que mede as palavras com o objetivo de fazer Siclano acreditar em algo que Fulano sabe que não é verdade.  É possível mentir sem dizer nada, ou dizendo frases que são verdadeiras; se quem fala sabe que o outro vai entender errado, está mentindo.

Bitcoineiros usam a palavra "inflação" num sentido muito especial, "quantas bitcoins adicionais foram mineradas".

O que o público entende quando se fala em "inflação do real" etc, é "quantos reais a mais tenho que pagar para comprar a mesma coisa".  No caso a palavra "inflação" é abreviação de "inflação de preços".

Então, assim como a inflação do real desde janeiro foi 6,5% ao ano, a inflação do bitcoin foi 350% ao ano.  Isto é, se o valor do bitcoin continuar caindo no resto do ano como caiu de 01/Jan até hoje, em 31/Dez você vai precisar de 106,50 reais para comprar o que hoje custa 100 reais, e 450 bitcoins para comprar o que hoje custa 100 bitcoins.  (Um pouco menos se calcularmos hoje, porque a cotação USD/BTC subiu um pouco nestes dois dias.)

Em termos econômicos, a inflação mede aumento na disponibilidade de dinheiro relativamente a bens e serviços.  A impressão de mais notas pode ser uma causa da inflação, mas não é a única.   No caso do bitcoin, obviamente, a mineração contribui muito pouco para a inflação; a maior causa é que os Chineses estão perdendo interesse no bitcoin, então o monte de bitcoins que eles tinham estão ficando disponívels a preço menor.

Usar o sentido bitcoineiro de "inflação" quando se fala para o público em geral é enganação.  Quem fala sabe que eles vão entender errado.

Para se referir ao aumento de bitcoins mineradas, deve-se dizer "aumento de bitcoins mineradas" e não "inflação".

Tentar convencer algueḿ a investir em bitcoin dizendo que é um jeito de fugir da inflação, "porque bitcoin não tem inflação", é vigarice pura e simples.  Dizer que "inflação do bitcoin desde janeiro foi só 10.77% ao ano" (como provavelmente os "vendedores" vão fazer na Venezuela e Argentina), é só um pouquinho menos vigarice.  Nos dois casos, quem ouve fica com uma idéia muito errada da estabilidade do valor do bitcoin.

If I were a famous multi-billionaire, I would charge 1 million US$ to donate an "undisclosed sum" (actually 1 US$) to any interested startup. 

Chinese Slumber Method prediction for Thursday April 17

Prediction valid for: Thursday 2014-04-17, 19:00--19:59 UTC (not before, not after)
Huobi's predicted price: 3198 CNY
Bitstamp's predicted price: 513 USD





Plot legend

Today's data point was very good, (S = 0.0005, W = 0.995); Huobi's clients slept soundly after a hectic day.  The last three points are far from being aligned, so fitting a straight line to all three them seems unjustified, and using only the last two seems too risky.  Instead we assumed a shifted decaying exponential A + B*Q**(d-d0), where d-d0 is the number of days since Apr/14, A = 3202.5, B = -283.56, and Q = 0.24883 (which is almost, but not quite, the same as repeating the last value).

The Bitstamp prediction, as usual, is the Huobi prediction divided by the currency conversion factor R, which was assumed to be 6.23 CNY/USD. It was 6.23, 6.32, 6.38, 6.21 at the last four Slumber Times.
 
Checking the previous prediction

Prediction was posted on: Tuesday 2014-04-15, 22:41 UTC
Prediction was valid for: Wednesday 2014-04-16, 19:00--19:59 UTC (~20 hours later)

Punished for being bull:

Huobi's predicted price: 3345 CNY
Huobi's actual price (L+H)/2: 3185 CNY
Error: 160 CNY (~26 USD)

Bitstamp's predicted price: 529 USD
Bitstamp's actual price (L+H)/2: 511 USD
Error: 18 USD
 
NOTE: "Satisfaction guaranteed, or twice your load back."  -- sign on septic tank truck

That jump is part of an 'exponential' rise that began 20 min ago and is going on in both exchanges.

As usual, it is hard to tell who started it; but since Huobi is still sleeping (almost 6:00 am there), it may be that the risen is driven by Bitstamp, and arbitragers are copying the price over to Huobi with no resistance.   The lump buy may have been by an arbitrager, or not.

Let's see what happens when the Chinese wake up, in an hour or two.

I see a great business opportunity for people who own bitcoins AND play the guitar. 

By the way, The former owner of MercadoBitcoin, the company that set up that ATM, was also the creator of BitcoinRain, a Brazilian ponzi that collapsed after allegedly taking some 12,000 bitcoins from investors.  According to the then-owner, a hacker invaded MercadoBitcoin and stole all the BitcoinRain funds --- by COINcidence, just after they received a major withdrawal request.   That person later sold MercadoBitcoin to other people, who naturally do not see themselves responsible for the losses of BitcoinRain's clients.

I read somewhere that there was a guy sitting next to a bitcoin ATM (in North America, IIRC), offering better deals than the ATM.