What I'd like to know is the influence of new people learning about bitcoin every day and buying in, as a factor with how many new bitcoins are mined every day, and how those affect the price's likelihood of climbing up overall. For example, is there a viral factor to this, which is impacted by good/bad press, and by how much?
Sometimes I use "bitcoin" as a key word in a Twitter search and it seems the number of tweets per 10 seconds is going up, with more progressive questioning overtaking Business Insider-type bashing. How much influence does that have on whether the price will indeed go up over time, and by how much?
You have to go read up on Bitcoin fundamentals, and particularly mining, if that's what interests you.
The amount of Bitcoins mined per day stays the same. In layman's terms, the protocol has a self adjusting difficulty algorithm: when more people mine, mining difficulty increases, and viceversa. This is supposed to ensure a steady amount of Bitcoins (currently 25 per new block) minted every 10 minutes.
(this a great over-simplification; do go and read up Satoshi's paper and the wiki)
More interested in what it means for the price. I'll come right out & ask, will the growth in adopters grow exponentially, and how will this affect price -- given the steady rate of new bitcoins mined with a cutoff at 21m?
As for good press continuing to outweigh the bad, I think this is due to the simple fact of human nature: greed, people only want to see the positive (why happy bubble gum Star Wars was so much more successful than deep thought dystopian Blade Runner for example).
Incidentally I sense an increase in adopters as a contributing factor to an increase from current hover around stamp 650...
