who do you think these otc buyers are? i saw the recent tweet from bitfury refusing a 25000 coin sale to a family office. i can't believe the seriously rich have the time, knowledge or faith to play around with chinese exchanges to coordinate their buys.
Money managers of multi-millionaire and billionaire families have to time to play around on exchanges. Its their job! Do you think these rich families are doing all the work?
A first time OTC buyer without a money manager might not take the time to "play around" on Chinese exchanges. A multi-millionaire who buys BTC monthly, or is buying over time might think it is well worth it to suppress prices themselves. OTC firms on the other hand have the biggest advantage of price suppression.
Also, Bitfinex is where I see the suppression happening not the Chinese exchanges. The Chinese exchanges are being used more for BOT MANIPULATION, i.e. I have a buy wall on BFX but nobody will sell into it, so my bot on the Chinese exchange drags the price down using a very little amount of coins, then the price on BFX drops right through my buy wall. The volume on Chinese exchanges is so high that the only way it is possible is if you buy and sell to yourself over and over, to manipulate the price. This only started happening when zero fees exchanges came around. There aren't millions or even thousands of people buying bitcoin a day, most of the volume is a few whales prying bitcoin from all the small minnows that are trying to trade.
I lot a few hundred BTC margin trading before I figured this all out. Now I keep a significant amount in cold storage, try to think like the manipulator, and buy the dips. Ive made back the BTC I lost and some since then.
EDIT: and the whole working in unison thing isn't happening. Most OTC buyers only buy once or maybe twice. They only need to "manipulate" for a week at most, or until their buy/sell goes through. Then the market moves suppression free. When the next billionaire buyer comes along, they then do what they need to get their good price. The only ones who do this over and over, or non stop, are OTC firms and buyers who continually buy, and there are far fewer of them then "normal" OTC buyers. I am not saying that there isn't a coalition out there, but I'm more sure about the rest.