I predicted that ETH would be pumped to a market cap of $1 billion at the time the market cap was "just" $500 million. It was quite easy to spot as I have been watching every movement of ETH since the very beginning. It's being pumped with the same amount of coins each time. The guys behind this massive pump play it very well.
Interesting observation. I have wondered if this etherium pump is part of the lead up to bitcoin halving? It seems to have been effective as a way to shake quite a few people out of a portion of their bitcoins.
In general I think bitcoin will rise due to halving which is why i added more to my stack in the $200's and not selling for a good while yet.
The next bubble will be only a small part due to market forces of the halving though. There will be a lot of pumping. Speculation. New investors rushing in from stocks and precious metals. Hope the block size is up to it.
I am quite sure that the guys behind this pump made a good $3-$5 million in BTC. That profit is also being used to create massive amounts of volume and to manipulate the price even further.
Just look at the buy side of the orderbook right now, it has 12,500BTC open buy orders, and from time to time you'll see it go up to around 15,000BTC. A while back there were only 2,000-4,000BTC in open buy orders. That's a good difference.
Whatever happens the coming months, at some point the party will be over and the price will return to earth where it belongs.