To all those babbling about market manipulation: how exactly is the market being manipulated? There are numerous exchanges, all operating like an isolated little wallstreet all their own, each with their own price for bitcoins. That price is set by the users making bids for bitcoins and selling them at certain prices.How can it possibly be manipulated? And in all of the exchanges at once? I just don't think it's remotely possible for this spike to be due to widespread manipulation, given that there's a limited number of bitcoins and a finite amount are generated on a moderately predictable schedule (1 block every 10 minutes, which means 25 new coins every 10 minutes on average -- the difficulty doesn't only go up, it goes down if necessary to maintain 1 block per 10 mins based on the previous 2 week's network hash rate).Sure, a few USD here or there are manipulation. But not all of it. That's ludicrous. Again, word of mouth is exponential. Even Ashton Kutcher invested in them for fuck's sake. They're a hot item -- you're gonna be kicking yourself for not buying in now when they're $200 each in 6 months, if you ask me.