After a weekend high of $675, bitcoin drops back to $626

Breaking with a long tradition of boring weekends, bitcoin prices surged to the highest levels since early March over Saturday and Sunday. With average prices briefly breaking the $675 wall on Sunday, prices soon dropped back to the $625 range seen through most of Monday. On some smaller exchanges, such as Vault of Satoshi, bitcoin prices actually broke $700 at the height of Sunday trading.

The general price trend is still strongly positive, however, with prices up nearly $200 from the start of the rally on May 20. Bitcoin hasn’t had a more than a few days of sustained price growth in 2014, hinting that something fundamental is driving the current trend, now entering into its third week. The last time a comparable event took place was in late December, following the first “China bans bitcoin” sell off and recovery.

There is still no clear cut reason for the rising price, and theories ranging from quiet pre-bubble moves by Wall Street to market manipulation by automated trading bots are becoming commonplace in bitcoin web communities. The overall consensus seems to be the lack of truly bad news in recent months, and the growing adoption of bitcoin-related merchant services by large-scale companies. There is also a long-rumored “Q3” launch of various bitcoin-backed securities on the horizon, such as the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust.