That does make a lot of sense and would explain the sudden rise in price in a handful of altcoins with no real news about them or any recent developments concerning those coins.
There are so many to choose from now as compared to the time of the Mt. Gox incident.
I don't see a spike in new users signing up to Steemit or any new news about it that would justify the price spike. Very informative and insightful comment. Thanks.
@luzcypher it would also explain why Bitcoin has "lost" 30 percent of its market share to altcoins in recent weeks. I would suggest to you, the start of the erosion in market share could probably be traced back to the liquidity issues related to Bitfinex (while I have not confirmed this for myself). Were I a betting man, I would imagine in the coming weeks Bitcoin will recover at least half the market share it lost once liquidity returns to the Bitcoin market.
When you can take Bitcoins and leverage them for 2.5 times on Poloniex for altcoins, it makes recovering your risk premium easy. Liquidity issues at Poloniex would explain the $100 premiums on Poloniex for a short period the past two weeks s well.