The price of the digital currency #SolarCoin (SLR) rallied again on Thursday, rising by 42% during the 24-hour period before UK lunchtime.
Over the previous week SolarCoin - which rewards solar generators for their electricity production - has risen from $0.80 to $2.42, a 300% increase. During that period the price has fallen back and recouped twice, but the price has not dropped below $1.40, indicating a minimum benefit of 75% to people who own SolarCoins.
During the principal price spike of 7-9th January, more than $50m was invested into SolarCoin. That money has largely stayed within the currency.
More people than ever now own SolarCoins - and they are holding on to them.
It's unclear where the sudden rush of interest has come from (although some kind of blockchain analysis might reveal this). Between August and December the increase in the price of SLR was more or less linear, increasing by 50% each month. That changed in January when price growth became suddenly exponential.
SolarCoin 3-month price: Linear to Exponential
Sometimes smaller currencies like SolarCoin benefit when the price of Bitcoin cools off. Again, this has not happened during the January period when BTC prices remained relatively stable.
With no particular news updates, or listing on new exchanges, or, well, anything much, it appears, therefore, that the appeal of SolarCoin is increasingly viral.
SolarCoin taps into the existing network of people that own Solar PV assets. By giving SLRs to people in this network, the usage of SLR increases, and as more people are on-ramped so value increases.
At present, reckons Francois Sonnet, advisor to the SolarCoin foundation, only 1% of solar generation is signed up for SolarCoin, so there's plenty of room to expand.
In some of his video interviews, SolarCoin co-founder Nick Gogherty has said that "People find it very difficult to understand what happens when things go exponential".
So sometimes, it seems, things really do go ballistic.
