Quote from: MatTheCat on June 03, 2014, 02:26:07 PM

Quote from: davidgdg on June 03, 2014, 01:53:48 PM

Am I the only person who finds this endless "whale" stuff both boring and paranoid? Nobody ever gives a plausible explanation as to who these whales are supposed to be or how they are able to manipulate prices to their advantage. All you ever get is arm-waving, ranting and metaphors. It's all very conspiracy-nuttish and unpersuasive.

Time and time again, in all areas ranging from geo-politics right down to personal relationships, things come out into the public domain that make it clear that all was not as it seemed nor as it was supposed to be.

If you don't find the way the way that Bitcoin has been traded recently a little 'peculiar', then that is your prerogative not to do so. Perhaps the numerous shit coin ramps were all straight down the line and innocent as well? Move along, nothing to see here?

You stick with your 'everything in the world is at it says on the tin' understanding of how the world works and I shall stick to suspecting that powerful people conspire to manipulate events and occurrences to suit their own agendas/desires (duh).

For the reasons I describe in my opening post, this bullish cup n handle formation has come about in a very strange and inorganic fashion. Even permabulls who were watching the action and were aware of the temporary swap rate hike on Bitfinex are smelling fish. Take away the price engineering from this market and we would most certainly correct from here, but probably, we are going to break to the upside. I feel sure that the market engineers will see to that, or perhaps already have seen to it since 90% of traders are bot algorithms........give em the price data they, need, they will do the rest in due course.

Using an algorithm to trade is not market manipulation so that has no bearing on the discussion. Alt coin ramps seem to be the result of people's desire to buy the latest hot new thing. More fool them but again not market manipulation by whales or anybody else.

Most sharp price rises in the BTC market have a mundane explanation. Somebody places a large buy order and that sends the price up. Simple as that.The interesting thing is why people decide to buy in the quantities they do when they do. You would have to ask them, but Occam's Razor would suggest the answer is that people buy when they think it is a good time to buy, not because they have some nefarious plan to ramp up prices and then sell.

I don't dispute that there are ways to cheat. For example I sell 10,000 BTC to you at the mid price on a relatively low volume exchange at 1200 on the 4th June. I have an obvious incentive to buy some BTC on that exchange at 1200 to send up the price. Or there is inside trading. But these are special cases, not systematic problems.

As to whether there is anything peculiar in the recent price rise. No more so than any other price rise or fall in the last three years. Prices rise. Then they fall. Then they rise again. You don't know when in advance. It's what markets do.