I think from back at $200.00 (technically 50.00 but less so) until now and moving forward; One could consider the perspective of the "Modern BTC miner". This being wealthy people who have interest in the speculative aspects of BTC. You know, the types who want 100,000 BTC or more. I'm sure there are more who want / think they will get 100k than there are total coins to be minted. This is just considering those at 100k; think how many will / do want 10K, 1K.....
These Modern BTC miners are mining a different blockchain, so to speak. Their perspective must be different, since money can't build you a computer to mine 100k BTC.
Coin parameters:
Blockchain = BTC Holders
Total Max coins = 210
(21M BTC / 100K per person)Difficulty = Market sentiment
(overall bullish or bearish market at a given time) (bullish = higher difficulty / bearish = lower difficulty) Block Reward = 1/Market price
(eg. 200.00 buy = .005 reward / 800.00 buy = .00125 reward etc) Reward Halving = every 2x market price
Algorithm = Proof of Rumor / Psychological
It seems if you look at the "modern miners" from this perspective, the recent activity should make more sense. This is very similar to mining the BTC directly with computers as most are used to. The only difference here is the blockchain is now you. You can modify max coins produced based on how many you "feel" wealthy people will want; eg- 10K = 2,100 max coins.
As you can see from above, difficulty can be hard to control / regulate (just like with normal mining) and times of lower difficulty are good to mine (buy). However, block reward is a key point; from this perspective. As both a reward reduction and halving can occur rapidly; whereas this is not the case with traditional mining being set.
Essentially, someone noticed the lower difficulty (bear wall) and decided to turn on their ASIC (big wallet)....Seems they found a few blocks.