To compare BitCoin and gold and their trading patterns really misses the mark, in my opinion, due to the massive difference in fundamentals.
In gold you have an asset where the price is being
suppressed, not supported, and not by users, but by
owners, and not for the obvious reason. The largest owners do not act as other purposeful market participants because of the the
extreme differences they have. Thus, the
price of a portfolio asset, for the largest owners, is worth
infinitely less than the
ability to retain their
monopoly on issuing what billions of people use as currency. BitCoin, unlike gold, currently poses
no material threat to disrupting this monopoly.
In other words, to discuss the gold market and not discuss
GATA's work is pure folly.
In the OP, I suggested that Bitcoin
is experiencing suppression - though not explicitly. Patterns in the leverage games are virtually identical between Bitcoin at Bitcoinica and gold in the major futures markets - the same methods of attempting to squeeze weak, leveraged positions. What made things particularly unsettling was the frequency and similarity, as well as the correlation - until massive physical demand in gold surfaced recently. Keep in mind the similarities have not just been in price movements, but also
behind the scenes in volume, stop-hunting probes and forced liquidations; too much to be purely coincidental.
There does seem to be a difference, as you note, between the motive of the Bitcoinica moves and gold's - the former seems to be more profit-oriented than those in the latter. In other words, Bitcoin seems to offer an opportunity to grow wealth while extrication from a bad situation dominates the feel of gold trading. In addition, Bitcoin has far less of a derivative environment clouding its unit value - the equivalent of gold prices being driven by physical metal instead of leveraged positions.
You're right about Bitcoin not being a material threat yet, but it is possible that it could be
perceived as one despite deterioration of the existing monetary regime being a greater priority for those institutions built upon it. Whether that perception is the present situation, and whether there's a wait-and-see approach being taken or active attempts at control by more than independent professional traders, I'm not sure.
What I do know is that there has been political attention and banks' traders dabbling with it, so I think it's safe to assume that there's
some level of awareness, even if it may not be a priority consideration. The scramble to facilitate mobile payments points to an effort that may have been influenced
in part by Bitcoin's potential to dominate that area.