Following your charts? You probably ought to be. Something spectacular is happing with the price of bitcoin this fine Memorial Day weekend.

Already, social media is plastered with excitement and “to the moon” references as the price has surged past $550 in the wee hours of the morning (at least here in the United States).

At the time of this writing, we’re observing a price of $570 at the Bitstamp exchange, with a peak of $586 earlier this morning. That brings the price up to approximately eight percent in the past twenty-four hours.

But keep your eyes glued to the screen, because things can go either way in a heartbeat.

And while I’m no markets expert, it seems to be as if we’ve passed a phase of stability in which the price really did nothing interesting for weeks on end (although this is the sort of thing the bitcoin economy needs – stability).

There’s a new sense of optimism in these markets, and traders are curious as to just how high this price can go.

It’s got some work if it wants to pass the all-time high of $1163 at Bitstamp (nor do I think we’re close to this happening time-wise), but these next few days and weeks will be interesting.

This also happens to be a perfect transition to this week’s poll:

[poll id=”10″]

A brief history on bitcoin price surges:

The community saw the first big bubble over one year ago in April 2013, when the price of bitcoin jumped from double digits to triple digits in a short span of time.

Late in the year (November, specifically), the price of bitcoin once again surged to it’s all-time high of $1,000+ due to Chinese interest in the digital currency.

Let us know what you think. What do you attribute this price increase to? Moreover, do you think this rapid climb will persist?