after the "December"? halving?
Here's a related thread on speculation as to the date. But it looks to be more November than December:
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https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/date-for-25-btc-per-block-67185 -
http://www.BitcoinClock.comWill BTC go up in price since the rewards will be half of what they were before therefore making BTC "harder" to obtain?
What happens is people see things like "Oil supply drop following hurricane/mideast tension/undersea drilling catastrophe/whatever" and remember that after that happens the price of oil jumps 20% so they think that the same type of cause-and-effect is going to occur with Bitcoin.
The big difference is that hurricane, or middle east issue or whatever wasn't expected, and the prices had to quickly adjust to the new reality.
This upcoming block reward drop is already known. It was known back on January 3rd, 2009 (when the genesis block was created). Sure, the exact date wasn't known ...., it was initially targeted to not occur until January 3rd, 2013 but faster mining has pulled forward the date to now where it is expected to occur sometime around November 30th, 2012 or earlier.
So with no "surprise" coming, the market might already have priced in the drop. It may even have over-estimated the importance of the drop by pricing BTC/USD at $12. Maybe come December if the exchange rate is still $12, a bunch of investors that were waiting for the big payoff see that it didn't happen and unload, pushing the exchange rate down into single digits again.
Nobody knows.
What isn't known is how widely bitcoin will gain traction and when that might start in earnest. That is why the blockchain daily transaction numbers and estimated total output metrics are watched so closely -- they are unknowns and weigh more on the exchange rate than the previously known block reward drop from 50 BTC to 25 does.