IMO the recent price moves can be attributed to the constant addition of new shit coins creating a sucking effect of BTC. Mintpal is adding new coins at an alarming rate without monitoring capital inflow into their trading system. Their only purpose is to make money so as they add more coins they get more capital inflow, but IMO the capital inflow is not enough to sustain the current price of the ever growing list of coins.
And of course today is Monday (or Tuesday it depends where you are) and they will be adding a new coin so people appear to cash out to get ready for the next train ride.
And of course they will do this again in a couple of days when they do a NINJA launch of new a secret coin which is probably beginning a price ascent today and will be dumped on Mintal users in a couple of days for profit taking. Who will benefit of the ninja launch? Mintpal first and also the people that have insider knowledge of the launch; they will buy that coin today and dump it in two or three days to Mintpal users.
I sure hope that someone kicks Mintpal in the ass with an investigation for insider trading! They are cheating us and that should be illegal.
*** Update1: Here is where the new BlackHalo will make a huge difference.
*** Update2: Oh I see METH has won the voting. Will soon be sucking more BTC
*** Update3: And I just realized that the voting could also be manipulated so more investigation required. We can see that volume on poloniex increased yesterday 20 hours ago! https://www.poloniex.com/exchange/btc_meth
*** Update4: METH was anounced 11 hrs ago but the volume significantly increased 20 hrs ago so yes I have my doubts.
Thats not the only thing, METH (23k votes, 0.23 btc paid) was not even the first coin it was BCT Bitcointalkcoin(28k votes, 8 btc paid).
But BCT got 20k less votes on last hours before announcement, so after the volume increased of meth, because of "bot voting" and someone who "accidentely deposited 8 BTC".
I found that very suspicious but didn't pay any extra attention to it as i can't do anything about it.
Now when reading your post and tying the links together it all makes sense..