Is the missing block a "Y"?

It would be important to understand why it rose to 32, perhaps more than why it dropped to 2.

Each bubble in bitcoin's history is can be explained as the opening of a new market -- either a new use, or a new community of users separated from previous markets by some barrier -- language, geography, profession, socioeconomic status, whatever.

Most bubbles had a fast rise, a crash, some oscillations, and then settled at a steady level substantially higher than the previou stady level.

The famous 2011 bubble, that started soon after 2011-04-01, at 0.5 $/BTC, began like the others; however, after the oscillations died out, instead fo settling to a steady state, it started to decay eponentially.  By 2011-11-09 is was down to 2 $/BTC; however, if a new bubble had not started at that time, it would probably have continued to drop until the pre-bubble level d 0.5 $/BTC.

The Nov/2013 buuble behaved in a similar fashion, but we have an explanation for it: it was created by the opening of the Mainland Chinese market, and it deflated during 2014 because the Chinese lost interest in bitcoin, since they could not use it for anything except gambling in the exchanges.  Now the last Chinese day-traders are dumping BTC to play in the Chinese stock market, which is booming.

So the question is: what was the "market" that created the 2011 bubble, and why did that market evaporate?

Perhaps... although I still haven't seen a convincing explanation for Autumn Radtke's "suicide".

Top 3 miners in the last 24 hours: F2Pool 29% + AntPool 12% + GHash.io 10% = 51%

The Winkelvoss COIN ETF is only a request to the SEC so far.  Approval is by no means guaranteed.

The syndicates for the USMS auctions grouped small investors who could not afford to buy 2000 BTC by themselves.  That is not Wall Street.

Pantera is a venture capital firm, that provides investments on the order of 10 million dollars to startup firms that may or may not prosper.

SecondMarket is a financial firm that specializes in non-standard instruments, such as pre-IPO equities.  Its only involvements with bitcoins were the organization of syndicates for the USMS auctions (it collected 1% fee from the second one) and the BIT fund.

SecondMarket's BIT fund is an investment fund backed by bitcoins, that is not openly traded; clients buy shares from the BIT management company (a subsidiary of SecondMarket), and can withdraw only by selling those shares back to the company.  It owns ~135'000 BTC that are in theory deposited by its clients  It has collected maybe 60 million dollars of since Sep/2013, but since the nominal price of its shares is tied to that of BTC, its assets are now worth only ~25 million USD.  Since Oct/2104 it has suspended redemptions (withdrawals).

Pantera has a similar bitcoin fund, PBP, but I don't know its numbers.  There are a few other bitcoin funds out there.  I doubt that they together got as much investment as SMBIT.

Tim Draper bought ~30'000 coins at ~600 USD/BTC, and another 2000 at ~350 USD/BTC, total ~19 million USD. 

All those amounts are small change by Wall Street standards.  One million dollars is the price of a median house in many US or European cities. 

The main reason being that the CEO's main business experience, before going to Cyprus, was to sell tickets and food both concessions for a music festival in Lincolnshire, that simply did not happen.

That is a mistranslation; the Aramaic original said "the private key, or the passphrase, or the 2FA of his account".

Well, it seems that we have very different views about the motivations and ideologies of miners and other players.  I don't know how we could resolve this difference, so let's leave it at that.

However, note that a large fraction of the miners are Chinese; that the Chinese may not have much trust in bitcoin as the currency of the internet; and that miners, more than any other bitcoiners, cannot plan much beyond a 2-year horizon, because their equipment quickly becomes uncompetitive due to improvements in the energy efficiency.

Well, I don't  agree with that.

The "proofs" I have seen usually assume that the cartel has some specific goal (say, pulling a double spend), and a specific simple-minded strategy, and argue that that attack would not pay off, of that strategy would fail.

However, there are many other goals that a cartel may have, and better strategies to carry out the "attack".  I can see some "attacks" that would probably succeed, would have to be accepted by the users, and would results in substantial payoffs for the cartel.  But I have worn my fingers arguing this issue in other threads, so please forgive me for not doing it again here.

Many people have told me that.  But "many" may be a thousand bitcoiners, perhaps, who care for the Core Values; and they may not include any big holders.  The other 99% of the bitcoin community (including the Chinese day-traders, who may still be setting the price) probably don't understad why a change in the protocol would be a bad thing, or don't care.

Note that increasing the supply of bitcoins is bad for the price only if the demand remains the same.  If there were enough new demand, increasing the supply would not prevent the price from increasing, too.

Try calling a Belgian "Frenchman".  Or an Austrian "German".  Or an Ukranian "Russian".  Or... 

Yes, and that is what I meant: if someone with billions to spare offered to buy 25 million bitcoins, the protocol would be immediately changed to create them, with the full cooperation of miners AND approval of developers.

Yes, I know that bitcoiners have taken solace in that belief, since the 51% risk became real.  Keep believing. 

Now THAT is offensive. 

May you spill coffee all over your paper wallets. 

(My macumba should get you soon, just waiting for six confrmations.)

If they too need a "" to recognize a joke, it would be a waste of time to apply. 

I suppose you have me on ignore, so you must not have seen this:


And this is not entirely a joke.  I am pretty sure that the protocol would be turned inside out, with full agreement of all the Defenders of the Dream, if that meant more money for them. 

Bitcoin -90

So Dow's drop was 4x that of Bitcoin.  Can't argue with that.

Rats, did I forget again to put the ""?

Indeed, the resemblance is striking:
BTC:USD, 1 year
Dow-Jones Industrial Average, 1 year

Never said they are frauds.  Unlike my "plan", I am sure that everything was clearly spelled out in the prospectus, and investors were fully aware of the risks.

I would rather guess the steady state before the Oct/2013 bubble, namely ~120 USD/BTC.