The problem may be that a group of optimists want the price to go down until the auction...  but regardless, clearly there could be quite a bit of short term volatility as traders attempt to front run any actual or imagined downwards "encouragement".  For example, the high USD demand on bitfinex -- just because you take the USD loan doesn't mean you have to buy coins with it. Since the primary way to get funds to bitfinex is via BTC, this demand could be people encouraging others to sell their coins and put the USD up for loan.