When the market is being controlled by literally one deep pocket whale or a small consortium, it's gonna be a while. They will take their time, keep short squeezing and selling into strength until all interest in the market is exhausted. Then they will dump.
Could be weeks before it all plays out. Check back at the end of the year.
Pretty much this. After watching bitcoin for only six months , I am amazed how grossly the BTC market is being manipulated by Chinese exchanges working together with a handful of deep pockets/mining cartels. From fake DDOS claims , to shamelessly pumped volume to front running and insider trading.Trading bitcoin looks like a bad joke right now.I might even state that bitcoin won't succeed without either decentralized exchanges or heavily regulated/audited ones. And I don't think China is keen on western regulation. Just my 2 cents.
Disclaimer: I bought all my coins from May through October this year most of them below $250 and overall am more than pleased with my investment but I am also done hodling for now.
The BTC market is unpredictable in the short term, but longer term the obvious patterns form. If you are a long term bull, then trade on the long term patterns. Buy/accumulate when the market is bottomed and no one cares, sell near top of rallies. Then be patient to get back in, because a rally bubble can take a while to unwind. A LONG while. There may even be several mini bull runs/short squeezes along the way, but ultimately the price ends up bottoming out way lower and all volume/volatility dies.
If the rally just started back up right now (4 days after the top), and buying volume suddenly increased out of the blue like what was seen in the last 6 weeks, and the price kept going beyond $500 to new highs, it would be a FIRST in the history of Bitcoin (and would break all long term patterns). And it would also mean that some BIG reason/news was on the horizon, something only the insider traders know about 4-6 months in advance. I kinda doubt we are at that place... at least not yet...