I wasn't saying it's not important. Just gave a few reasons why it's possible people are not reporting on it.
There would need to be some general comparisons made to see its real impact. For example when Silk Road 1.0 was shut down, how many exchanges were there realistically? Definitely not as many as there are now.
How many coins did silk road hold as a percentage of the market cap? Remember the BTC market cap has grown tremendously since then.
Also, why would it necessarily send Bitcoin down? Like the points given above, BTC was a smaller community then and so the coin would have lost value if even a few big players decided to exit the currency while taking a hit on BTC because they thought the sky was falling. Is it possible that it's happening now, sure. But, I can't just assume that.
You bring up an interesting point for sure because while people keep pointing to BIP 148 as the reason for falling, I wonder if that's true because BTC dominance has gone up since June. Could you have pinpointed the issue here?
Possibly.
RE: Poloniex broke?