If they can sell a significant amount of their coins for anywhere near the current price, they are already fabulously wealthy, regardless of whether bitcoin is successful long term or not.
These people would have every motivation to ensure the price stays at a certain level by:
1. Investing in or creating bitcoin companies to make it appear progress is being made to developing market/ecosystem;
2. Promoting general awareness of bitcoin to the public - including participating in bubble creation and resulting media coverage;
3. Purchasing limit quantities of bitcoin at key times to keep the price moving in the direction they like;
4. Etc., etc.
See for example this article, especially the last 2 paragraphs: "The Scheme" and "The Moral":
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bitcoin
Thoughts?
1. What would be more beneficial- a) making it appear that progress is being made in the development of bitcoin infrastructure by creating or investing in bitcoin companies or b)actually building functional bitcoin infrastructure so that bitcoin becomes more and more attractive to "normal" people and they can benefit from the savings and efficiency gains it offers?
2. Certainly, anyone who has bitcoin, whether 1 coin or 100,000, has an interest in there being media coverage.
3. I have the impression there are definitely people out there manipulating the market and profiting greatly at the expense of smaller traders. This is the case on wall street, so why would bitcoin markets be an exception?
Bitcoin is like the Blade of pyramid schemes. All of their strengths, and none of their weaknesses.
This seems to be heading in an Illuminati of bitcoin direction. I think most of the people who have huge amounts of bitcoin didn't get those huge amount by being dumb. They know that, like with any company, too rapid growth can be damaging. I think bitcoin is in good hands.