If you've been around the cryptosphere, you've probably heard both camps on whether BTC is manipulated. Many say it's the "weak hands", others blame large institutions, while other's say it's all that MT GOX guy doing another dump? What do you think? Is it manipulated? Please include your reasoning on the matter.
Those issues will not occur if it is not true and all of the things you mentioned are some of the reasons why bitcoin dropped its value. Weak hands, big whales, MT. Gox they are all interrelated. The big whales creating artificial dumps to create panic in the market so that those with weak hands will sell their coins. MT Gox is dumping their coins in large volume which is eating the buy support on the exchanges.
Market manipulation is a domino effect. Big whales and MT Gox will dump it for a certain percentage while weak hands will do the big dumping. Its good to learn from experience because most of the time, newbie suffers from this manipulation.