re: Bitstamp Halts Withdrawls

I'll meet you halfway on that. I believe that there are a relative small amount of "players" in the bitcoin world among an ocean of bit investors and it's those players that manipulate the swings on prices on occasion.

We already know that it doesn't take a huge amount of volume to be suddenly dropped to at least temporarily crater prices and if one were to look at the buy and sell orders on the exchanges, the vast majority are for fractions of a bitcoin at a time.

Mix all that in with the fact that the exchanges can at any time "temporarily suspend" exchanges back to dollars and the price of bitcoin is more or less a mirage. It doesn't matter if it hits 25,000 if you can't get it.