Google trends image. What exactly is fueling this rally? This tells me it's old money doing the same all over.
maybe there is a service called "baidu trends"?
Zero trade fees in china is fueling this pump/fake-rally.
Zero trade fees are what's called "free market." So I have no idea why you think that would distort the market.
It's pretty easy to fake volume when there are no financial constraints to doing so. Don't you think? A single whale can repeatedly buy and sell his own coins. (That's not to say the market won't roll over him or that this is what is happening)
Sure you can manipulate volume. How will that help in manipulating price?
You don't think manipulating volume can affect price action? Re price manipulation, that would depend on how much of the coins/fiat on the exchange is controlled by the whale. Is it impossible that one could drive up the inter-exchange rate this way? Or would he just be run over by arbitrage? I don't really know, I'm just brainstorming...
Volume manipulation can only affect price within the spread. I suppose it could indirectly affect price by screwing over other daytrader's indicators, but I don't think they could reliably do so in a way that would actually cause a defined trend in one direction.
I figured that large manipulation of volume could skew indicators-- possibly could indicate a lot of buying pressure that is not real. Which in turn, could affect price action. Sort of talking out of my ass here, though.