Someone please create an @errrrrrratic account that keeps posting predictions that the price may go up or down or neither at any moment now.

I don't think that the PBoC is paying attention to bitcoin anymore.  They have blocked all uses that could matter to them, namely as currency of commerce, as investment instrument, and as alternative to official banks.  Bitcoin in China is now just a gambling tool -- and the PBoC does not care about gambling.

If Chinese citizens use bitcoins to move their money out of China, that is actually good for China's economy because it means that foreigners who buy the worthless bitcoins from the Chinese for dollars are paying for their citizens' expenses abroad.  The reverse traffic (foreigners selling bitcoins at the Chinese exchanges and withdrawing the CNY) must be too small to worry.

Other Chinese government agencies may still be worried about uses of biitcoin for illegal commerce, bribery, subversion, etc..  The consumer protection entities may be worried about people believing in moontalk and losing their savings.  However, those agencies already forced the exchanges to use strict KYC/AML procedures, and forbade them to aggressively market bitcoin to the public.  Presumably they are satisfied with the status quo too.

Both of those drops were reactions to Chinese government "bans". Since the end of April, there haven't been any similar bad news relevant to the Chinese markets.  That may be why the drops have been more gradual: they have been vague "epidemics of pessimism" rather than bomb blasts.

EDIT: Actually I don't know whether the 2013-12-06 drop was due to the "december decree".  The decree was published a week later, is that right?  If so, then the  2013-12-06 may have been triggered by inside info, or by other causes.

At Bitstamp:

on 2013-12-06 it dropped from 1020 to 814 (20%),
on 2014-03-27 it dropped from 581 to 475 (19%).

These were only open-to-close changes.  There were several days when it dropped more than 20% in less than 24h, but in most of those days the price recovered partially by the end of the day.

Well, 450$ has been the bottom since April 26, when China stopped "banning" bitcoin...

Are there such "lifeguards" in the common stock exchanges?  I would guess that their "terms of service" say that they will not be responsible for client screw-ups, not even to the extent of refunding their fees or blocking them.  If they did help some clients, it would be hard for them to draw the line ("sorry, but your mistake does not qualify for refund because it was not stupid enough").

Re the runaway BTC-e robot: something similar happened earlier this year (Jan/30?) on BTC-China, when a runaway robot traded more than 35'000 BTC in less than one hour; which was about 10x their habitual daily volume.

IIRC, at he time they were about to introduce a market maker-taker fee mechanism (charge X% from the incoming order and pay X% to the waiting one); perhaps that confused the robot.

There is much noise about GABI and little information.  If GABI works like SMBIT, they will buy only if and when clients buy their shares.  The 200 M$ is what they HOPE to get in 1 year.  SMBIT (~107'000 BTC, ~50 M$) is not growing; I haven't seen any reason why GABI would be more attractive.

I think it shelters the profits of the fund managers, but I recall reading that profits obtained by clients would be taxed by their respective governments anyway.

I can t find any article surveying and comparing the existing bitcoin investment funds.  Is there one?

GABI will be competing with PBP, SMBIT, Exante, and perhaps a few other bitcoin funds.

SMBIT (now with ~107'000 BTC) has not attracted any significant investment since May, and has actually shrunk a bit over the last month.  Exante was started in 2011 and has some ~90'000 BTC, I don't know how it is evolving.  I know nothing about the other funds.   

The value of SMBIT's shares is pegged to the market price of BTC.  Officially, they buy BTC when clients invest, sell BTC when clients liquidate, and make profit from fees.  I suppose that the other funds work the same way, is that correct?

What is special about GABI that would convince someone to invest in GABI but not in the other funds?

Great!!

Thanks!  Sorry, but that was what people claimed in some other thread.  I gave googled it now, it was/is just a 2-day-only offer, 75$ for purchases over 300$, or 150% for purchases over 500$:
http://www.newegg.com/global/uk/Info/NewsroomDetail.aspx?ID=1354&Type=3

Thus the max discount was 30% if you buy exactly 500$, less for other amounts.  If their "normal" discount is 20% then it is not that impressive.

Still, I would like to know who was picking up the tab of that discount: Newegg or Bitpay?

I don't pretend to understand what has happened any more than anyone else.  But note that the April story is Mark reporting the theft (or reacting to someone else's complaint) to the police.  Presumably he told the police that it was the malleability hack, and the police naturally could not do anything from that, and just archived the complaint.

Actually, those news report that Mark said that he handed over documents to the police.  Mark said many other things, though...

I would guess that the new investigation is unrelated to that April filing, and is based on clear evidence uncovered by Kobayashi's investigation of the MtGOX books.  I hope that more will come.

I have read that GABI will start accepting clients next Monday (Sep/01).  I have no idea about when and whether COIN will be approved. 

Pantera's PBP is already operating.  Malta's Exante fund (80'000 BTC) is already operating.  I don't know anything else about those or other funds.

(BTW, Jon Matonis seems to be an "evangelist" for the Exante fund, but may not be an owner/investor.)

It is not the exchanges' choice, of course.  Some traders -- arbitragers -- keep the exchanges linked, by buying cheap bitcoins on one exchange and selling them with profit on another, until the prices match.  How could someone stop that?

The Chinese exchanges have better liquidity, so the price in the West tracks the price in China, rather than the other way around.  Calling their volume "fake" will not change that.

Well, I see it differently: the maximum investment was on Aug/06 (108185 XBT) and it has shrunk a bit since then.  It has grown only 2% since May.  Their clients do not seem to be "professional/big" investors, but rather moderately well-off individuals, who would rather pay the SMBIT high fees and accept the 6-month lock than buy coins on their own.  And they are not buying anymore. 

GABI and the other upcoming funds (by Matonis, Winkles, Draper, ...) will be competing with SMBIT to some extent.  Will they fare better?

The police will only investigate if someone makes a concrete accusation of a crime.  Clients would be hard-pressed do it while they don't even know whether the coins were really stolen (perhaps they never existed?) or when they were stolen.

My understanding is that the Japanese police was asked to start a criminal investigation only recently, at the request of Mr. Kobayashi, and for only a small part of the missing BTC (less than 30'000).  I imagine that he already found clear evidence of such a theft, but there may be more in the future.

I don't know of any other police investigation before that.  Perhaps clients did not care enough about catching and punishing the thief (or did not have enough information to file a complaint), and chose to do nothing or to file civil lawsuits only, which are now preempted by the bankruptcy process. 

Some US clients apparently had done a private investigation that resulted in evidence of criminal acts, but they only filed a civil lawsuit in the US and then retracted it to support the Sunlot proposal.

I understand that Mr. Kobayashi is doing a private investigation of his own (using external expert consultants for the technical aspects).  However his first concern is to understand MtGOX's accounting and evaluate the merits of the client's claims.  Given that the final situation of MtGOX and the clients' claims were the result of several years of intense trading, that alone is not an easy task.  Hopefully he will figure out enough about what happened to call for further police investigation.

The BTC in the crown are too small and crooked, should be improved.

(Speaking like a dentist advising his torturers about the right way to hold a drill  )

Hun?