The present rally in PPC can be easily sustained as long as people continue to withdraw PPC from BTC-e.
I believe BTC-e has very few PPC on hand, maintaining only a small fractional reserve relative to its deposit liabilities.
Here is the evidence supporting this claim which I would describe as compelling but not conclusive:
1. I have requested PPC withdrawals several times in the last week where the withdrawal shows as completed in my Transaction History but doesnt show up on the blockchain. I contact BTC-e support, and they have sometimes credited the PPC back to my account and other times pushed it through the blockchain in delayed fashion. The pattern is not consistent with a hot wallet being drained that is then quickly refilled from cold storage because I have had repeated failures extending beyond 48 hours.
2. If you were BTC-e and you needed to acquire PPC right away to fulfill withdrawal requests, how would you do it? You would buy at another exchange, such as Vircurex. During the last month there has been a buyer on Vircurex purchasing 20,000 to 50,000 most days in one single market order, causing the price to rise momentarily as much as 33% as they tear through the sell order book. This is not rational behavior for a normal PPC buyer that could easily purchase the same PPC in the much more liquid BTC-e market and pay less. However, if that buyer is BTC-e trying to acquire PPC to meet demand for PPC withdrawals on BTC-e, then it makes perfect sense. In recent days there has been a PPC rally and these mysterious purchases have been stepped up on Vircurex in the last day there has been 125,000 PPC purchased there in three large buy orders.
3. There are indications that BTC-e has a large stake in NVC, so they have the motive and the means to suppress the price of PPC through very low fractional reserve.
I encourage BTC-e to post what their PPC reserve ratio in this thread. I think we will get silence from them.
So in conclusion, if you have PPC on deposit at BTC-e it is your best interest to withdraw it. Doing so will cause BTC-e to purchase PPC on another exchange such as Vircurex to provide your withdrawal and that will boost the market price of your PPC.
Longer term we need to develop liquid PPC markets at other exchanges and stop using BTC-e for PPC trading if we want the PPC price to be high.