<p>TL;DR: No idea, and your question's unanswerable in the first place :)</p>

<p>Why does a national currency rise or sinks in value? Why do a company's shares do the same? You will never get definite answers for these or your original question unless you manage to get into all the participants' heads to know what they were thinking of. Meanwhile, you can listen to pundits or draw your own seemingly informed conclusions.</p>

<p>A couple months ago, when there were these rumors about the US government possibly becoming unable to pay its debtors, Bitcoin started going up and up to the point of doubling its former value - obviously a lot of people were viewing it as a possible haven should the dollar fall. After it was clear such fears were based on nothing the Bitcoin fell down from that high.</p>

<p>But then it started climbing again, reaching again its former high mark, then doubling it, then doubling again... Looking at the graphs of this spectacular pike its clear to me a good part of that was a bubble caused by speculators jumping to ride the wave, but exactly <strong>which</strong> event triggered the upwards trend in the first place... to this day I honestly don't know.</p>

<p>Some say it's the hearing at the US Congress giving it legitimacy. Some say it's closing the Silk Road cleansed its image, though others say this event caused it's value to fall a bit. Some say it's even more interest by the Chinese... no single event can be clearly linked to this surge in value as was the case in the past with, e.g., the events in Cyprus.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-12-04T23:33:43.200Z
2013-12-04T23:33:43.200Z
Joe Pineda
<p>It is difficult to say, media news about Bitcoin, increased popularity in China and illegal market shutdown brought Bitcoin over 1000 USD. </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-12-04T21:51:35.247Z
2013-12-04T21:51:35.247Z
blogger
<p>about 2 months ago the price was at about 140 USD per coin, but a couple days ago I checked and it was well over 1000! 
what caused the sudden spike in value and will it continue to grow?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-12-04T21:57:36.820Z
In short, the price rose because demand for them rose. I heard rumors some exchanges actually ran out of bitcoins temporarily even, like Coinbase
Earlz
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-12-04T23:35:11.863Z
BTW, might be a subtle duplicate of this other one:
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/16671/what-has-caused-bitcoin-to-double-in-value-in-the-last-ten-days?rq=1
Joe Pineda
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-12-23T13:55:54.000Z
Fact based answer to this is simple: It rose because someone wanted a lot  and are willing to pay more. The question is who? Even this can be tracked. How? You need a lot of computing and surveillance power... who tracks it? National intelligence agencies... anyone in the public? Yes, exchanges... will they share their data? Probably not... but what can we learn from this? We will at least be able to see what countries the demand comes from... because some exchanges are better with some currencies, than other.
Dagelf
<bitcoin-economy>
why did bitcoin suddenly spike?
ZCoder
# why did bitcoin suddenly spike?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2013-12-04)

about 2 months ago the price was at about 140 USD per coin, but a couple days ago I checked and it was well over 1000!
what caused the sudden spike in value and will it continue to grow?

**Tags:** bitcoin-economy

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: In short, the price rose because demand for them rose. I heard rumors some exchanges actually ran out of bitcoins temporarily even, like Coinbase  
> **username_2**: BTW, might be a subtle duplicate of this other one: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/16671/what-has-caused-bitcoin-to-double-in-value-in-the-last-ten-days?rq=1  
> **username_3**: Fact based answer to this is simple: It rose because someone wanted a lot  and are willing to pay more. The question is who? Even this can be tracked. How? You need a lot of computing and surveillance power... who tracks it? National intelligence agencies... anyone in the public? Yes, exchanges... will they share their data? Probably not... but what can we learn from this? We will at least be able to see what countries the demand comes from... because some exchanges are better with some currencies, than other.  

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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2013-12-04. Score: 2

TL;DR: No idea, and your question's unanswerable in the first place :)

Why does a national currency rise or sinks in value? Why do a company's shares do the same? You will never get definite answers for these or your original question unless you manage to get into all the participants' heads to know what they were thinking of. Meanwhile, you can listen to pundits or draw your own seemingly informed conclusions.

A couple months ago, when there were these rumors about the US government possibly becoming unable to pay its debtors, Bitcoin started going up and up to the point of doubling its former value - obviously a lot of people were viewing it as a possible haven should the dollar fall. After it was clear such fears were based on nothing the Bitcoin fell down from that high.

But then it started climbing again, reaching again its former high mark, then doubling it, then doubling again... Looking at the graphs of this spectacular pike its clear to me a good part of that was a bubble caused by speculators jumping to ride the wave, but exactly **which** event triggered the upwards trend in the first place... to this day I honestly don't know.

Some say it's the hearing at the US Congress giving it legitimacy. Some say it's closing the Silk Road cleansed its image, though others say this event caused it's value to fall a bit. Some say it's even more interest by the Chinese... no single event can be clearly linked to this surge in value as was the case in the past with, e.g., the events in Cyprus.


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### Answer by username_4 on 2013-12-04. Score: 1

It is difficult to say, media news about Bitcoin, increased popularity in China and illegal market shutdown brought Bitcoin over 1000 USD.


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