It's quite obvious what's going on.
A quote from the Wall Observer thread:
So how you guys liking that back-and-forth wash trading?
Feels just like a groundswell of overwhelming public demand, doesn't it? At this rate we'll be over $5K in no time! /s
Some market manipulators are playing on people's confusion by trading massive volumes back and forth. "Crash", "recovery" - all of that stuff is meaningless bullshit at this point.
I feel like this is exactly what's going on. The price is being driven up so that they can pull the floor out on everyone and make bigger money on the short. Then it'll go back up again.
The thing I'm trying to figure out is why ETH has all of a sudden stopped following BTC. For the past week at least they've been in lockstep. ETH did exactly the same thing BTC did. That stopped today and I think it might support my theory that the efforts are being focused on manipulating BTC.