So I'm starting to wonder... did PBoC really do us long investors a favor?
I'm sensing some major bullish announcements in the Bitcoin ecosystem on the horizon early this year. Specifically new platforms (i.e., Abra, Mega Upload 2, etc.), perhaps some high profile merchant adoptions, ETF launch, who knows what.
But what we all DO know is that some mega whale traders usually have insider knowledge well in advance, typical 6-12 months in advance. So what they do is slowly ramp the market over that time period, then near the announcements (before the news media picks it up) go ape shit crazy with leveraged margin buys to create a new bubble.
Whatever you may believe in the short term, an over-leveraged, over-hyped bubble is not good for the medium and long term.
So did China PBoC just do us a short-term favor by killing margin trading on the Chinese exchanges? The suspect timing is palpable.... it's almost as if they knew something.
Either that, or they did it because secretly they know that they are going to start hiking down the Yuan rate several times this year... and they don't want more $$$ to leave via bitcoin.
I sometimes wonder how you can say several smart things about the overall dynamics, but then end up getting into such narrow theories about causation, to act as if only a few entities control BTC's price direction.
Surely a lot of the points that you are making have some truth in them, but even bigger players are going to have some questions or concerns regarding the extent to which they can preplan events to occur, to time them correctly and attempt to capitalize on "insider knowledge" and the extent to which such correction momentum will work for them and questions regarding the extent to which the price can move back up after such correction momentum is started.
I agreed that in the end, this latest price correction was likely beneficial to the overall BTC price performance, and those of us who either HODLed or bought more are likely benefiting from such volatility, but I don't agree with your seemingly continuing attempts to characterize these kinds of situations as if they were being controlled by a small number of insiders... that's just bullshit, even if there is some truth that some players have more power and influence than others, no small group has any kind of exact control over the situation nor over how certain of their own behaviors are going to play out from momentum that is provided in either direction.