You know what the real issue is with this? This Chinese news where so many people panicked over isn't anything that affects trading at all. It doesn't affect Bitcoin at all. If people took the effort to actually analyze and understand these articles, they wouldn't dump. Even after all these years people still haven't learned anything. People are as brainless as always. Especially when you consider how little effort it cost for whales to blow these articles up, but where the resulting market reaction is massive. It always works, so these whales will continue to influence the market. If people would stop dumping like brainless chickens, then these whales will have to come up with something else as it isn't working anymore.
I agree with you, majority of traders, even top whales are acting like headless chickens at the first sight of unconfirmed news.
After reading articles explaining what that recent Chinese government intervention really was I have to admit that they are doing good job!
So far Chinese exchanges seemed like total wild west: no fee policy, trading with borrowed money, fake volume - PBOC by stepping in did the right thing.
I have begun to see the main reason for bitcoin price volatility in psychological effects.
A few begin to run, and a big part of the flock follows.
The most important thing that you can have when working with bitcoins is a reasonable mind.
Psychological effects, no matter if they drive the price up or down, they all cool off in a relatively short time.