Alpha Bay wrote this on reddit
"We expect this to cause a spike in the price, so if you are an investor, now is the time to purchase Monero."
This is an obvious clue this thing is going to be manipulated either way, no doubt the two dark markets colluded together and bought up a bunch of Monero beforehand.
Definitely. Why do you think it was ramping since May? The rule is to buy the rumor, and sell the news. But eventually the fundamentals will dominate. If XMR denominates 10% of the AlphaBay transactions in December, the price should be at least $25 by New Year's Day.