user1947: Does anyone have any solid ideas or knowledge on why the price has dropped so much over the past few days? There is a lot of speculation, but nothing I have read to date seems to adequately explain the recent drop. 
The drop is illustrated here, and shows a decrease in price of roughly 14% over the two days:


user2464: Look at the humanistic aspects of trading 
People are cashing out for christmas...also around Jan 14 as the bills arive you will see the price go down as people cash out (Low Demand)
Mid Jan is great time to buy for a lot of Gold standard currency stocks like BTC
IMHO

user85: All you'll ever get is speculation. Nobody knows why prices change.
It's just like when you listen to the news and they tell you that stocks dropped because of "profit taking". Clearly, people were selling if stock prices dropped. But nobody really knows if people were taking profits, cutting losses, or something else entirely.
These are emergent behaviors of complex systems and only in rare cases can you explain price movements. The most popular theory I've heard is that at least one significant factor is BitInstant downtime.

1947: <p>Does anyone have any solid ideas or knowledge on why the price has dropped so much over the past few days? There is a lot of speculation, but nothing I have read to date seems to adequately explain the recent drop. </p>

<p>The drop is illustrated here, and shows a decrease in price of roughly 14% over the two days:
<img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/8CDWW.jpg" alt="enter image description here"></p>
 2464: <p>Look at the humanistic aspects of trading </p>

<p>People are cashing out for christmas...also around Jan 14 as the bills arive you will see the price go down as people cash out (Low Demand)</p>

<p>Mid Jan is great time to buy for a lot of Gold standard currency stocks like BTC</p>

<p>IMHO</p>
 85: <p>All you'll ever get is speculation. Nobody knows why prices change.</p>

<p>It's just like when you listen to the news and they tell you that stocks dropped because of "profit taking". Clearly, people were selling if stock prices dropped. But nobody really knows if people were taking profits, cutting losses, or something else entirely.</p>

<p>These are emergent behaviors of complex systems and only in rare cases can you explain price movements. The most popular theory I've heard is that at least one significant factor is <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=120706.0">BitInstant downtime</a>.</p>
