It just seems wrong to see bids exceed asks on an exchange. Why weren't those trades executed? I've also seen the exact same price on the bid and ask side, and wondered what went wrong.
(Yes - matching orders can be hard - like I wrote
here...)
If you look at the price, the higher bids were executed and show up as the price, that appears to be the whole point of them making the higher bids--to keep the shown price up.
It's too consistent to be natural. Watch the live orders for a while at bitstamp and you'll see what I mean.
This has only been as the price approached $130. Normally bids lead down, asks lead up.
When bids lead up, you know there is manipulation going on.
(Yeah, I've come to this conclusion after 6 hours of watching this.)