back in 2012 when prices were low it was actually a fun game to do.
back then it was done simply by creating "walls"
in short if you dont want the price to go down by 5 you would create a resistance wall that causes
it to cost more for sellers to drop the price
for instance if the price was X you would put buys at X-5
ill make it easy to understand. first an image to go with the explanation
A: imagine the price is just about $665 and you dont want to going to $659
you can see that it only takes about
80 bitcoins to eat up all them orders.
B: so you put in an order(eg:
30btc) far enough to not get hit soon but close enough for people to notice now that it takes 110btc to eat all them orders
C:
other people react. they see that theres now a larger then normal wall at $660 so theres no point in them adding an order below that as they dont have time to wait, thinking lower orders wont happen.. they become convinced the price will hold at that amount or higher
so some people add orders to $660 to reinforce the wall. and others put orders infront because they want their orders hit and satisfied the price wont drop further
this results in it taking 140btc to eat all of them orders
D: more people do the same adding more orders. now it going to take 200 btc to eat them orders (150btc before your order is touched) and those two orders after you have least chance of getting hit out of the orders in your price point
E: now here is the smart thing. knowing that orders are processed based on which ones at a price point was listed first, gets processed first. if you cancel your 30btc order at $660, the orders after you become next in line and then you can reapply your order again (in just milliseconds) to make you last in the queue. thus reducing your chances of your order being hit. so even without anyone else adding new orders the total coins are still 200btc on the order books, by just cancelling and reapplying your order. you move behind the two other orders, meaning they now get hit first should the price get that low.
now its still 200btc orderbook but now taking 170btc before your order is hit. most people dont know that if you dont want your order actually being hit you make sure your order is the most recently applied..
this can be monitored by simply seeing your price point volume increasing which obviously means more people are adding ontop of yours. so cancel and reapply to remain last in line.
many people dont realise it so they still see the order volume totals. and dont realise who is first or last. nor do they care
basically using something like 30btc can change other peoples trading patterns to make them have 170bt instead of 80 even before your order gets touched, all because of knowledge of how traders psychology works