Well, the oscillations (gravy train) are essentially over on the mother-of-all-triangles. We are entering the pinch point. The next few days will be interesting.
In all metrics you could go either way:
On the one hand we have 17M on the bid side which is over double what we had originally climbing into 100. But the end of the bank holiday did not increase bids. Of course, the pinch point is not a good time to place bids if you can just watch the charts so there could be secret rocket fuel on Gox.
On the news front we have very bullish news coming out of China, but medium term. But those directly involved will not be able to buy for quite some time. And we seem to have news exhaustion in the western world -- what coverage there is is all about speculation or regulation. But lots of bears posting here... implying that people who wanted out are out.
Fundamentally, the transactional uses for BTC that have existed since early/mid 2012 seem to remain strong (although I haven't heard updates from gambling sites, etc). So the 2012 extrapolated exponential trendline (call it E0) seems very solid. However, the question the market will resolve in the next week is whether the E1 trendline (starting Jan 2013) is also solid (leaving E2 and E3 as the bubble exponentials). On the bull side, note the trendline started near the block reward halving event & adoption of BTC payment options by certain web sites (these events sequester/limit supply and remain in force). On the bear side, that trendline is still freakin' insane :-), and anyway "final capitulation" event would likely plumb below it (we are right on it now). Also on the bear side: rpietila thinks its a sure thing, and is basing his "I am THE new gentleman elite" posts on its continued performance.
