Originally Posted by WarChild

As far as I understand it, and granted I haven't looked in to the situation in depth so I could well be wrong, there were nearly 6,000,000 Bitcoins mined before the general public even had a shot at mining any.

If that is true, then somebody might well have a large portion or even all of those early coins. At today's prices, that's more than 1.2 BILLION dollars worth. If even a small percentage of that position were to be suddenly liquidated, somebody would be very rich over night and the price per coin would absolutely plummet. A correction on that scale could well destroy market confidence overnight.

Of course this is all theoretical, and even if it's true there could still be money to be made in the mean time so long as you know when to get in and out. Personally, I'm not going to jump in at this point and stick to day trading gaps.