I have an immensely important question I want to ask since I was just told something, why does the price move the way it does?it goes up by 10-20$s then completely stops. And how much does it take to make it to 10$s plus?
Looking at the daily price and volume at Huobi, OKCoin, and other exchanges, I can see
(1) A gradual "exponential" increase in volume and price from about 2015-09-20 to the peak (~3350 CNY) on 11-04;
(2) A tumbling price and volume drop between 11-04 and 11-24 (down to ~2050 CNY);
(3) A very sharp increase in volume to a record high value on 11-24, that persisted until now; and a corresponding rally in price, by a rapid steady rise broken by several large jumps (to ~3150 CNY).
There was a partial crash today, to ~2800 CNY, but it is not clear yet how it will end.
There seems to be no certain explanation for these moves. (And it seems that no one wants to find out...)
My best candidate explanation for (1) is still the bitcoin-based MMM ponzi and copycats, mostly in China; amplified by day-trader speculation. The dates seem to match, the ponzi can easily move that amount of money, and the gradual "exponential" growth is consistent with the demand for bitcoins spreading among a new population of by "infection".
The crash (2) would then be the speculators dumping their coins when they realized that the primary demand had leveled off. Perhaps the ponzi saturated by 11-04, or participants ("lucky victims" and organizers) started to sell the bitcoins that they received.
The new rally (3) could be due to the same cause as (1); however, considering the much higher volume and the way it grew (suddenly rather than gradually), the cause is probably different.
Rally (3) may have been due to the crackdown by the Chinese government on the use of the Chinese state credit/debit card (UnionPay) to export cash for gambling and other purposes. The abuse seemed to be pervasive in Macau, the Las Vegas of China, which has a somewhat independent economy (like Hong Kong). Reports say that Mainland gamblers would go to Macau, pretend to buy merchandise at local pawn shops with the card, then pretend to return it for a cash refund (minus the shop's commission). That way they could bypass the card's limit on cash withdrawal. If that loophole was suddenly closed, it seems possible that the gamblers switched en masse to bitcoin.
A sudden jump in the price must be due to single person buying or selling a large amount of bitcoin in a short time interval. If the above explanation is correct, those may be exceptionally wealthy people trying to move their money out, or perhaps clandestine money transmitters providing that service for many smaller clients. Either way, the jumps seem to indicate that the price is determined by a relatively small number of players.