fuuuuu uuuuu ck diddily uck ... now i'm only at $1000+ since start of the year instead of $2500+ ... god damned $40 drop in a couple hours ... seriously ? ... you sonsobitches ! ... wtf happened to looking to cross over past 300 and stay above 300 ? ... at least i'm still in the black ... but still ... do the whales realize that every time they shock slam the market for double digit % loss in a matter of hours it further erodes and damages the perception of bitcoin as being a legitimate currency/commodity/thing to invest in whatsoever ?
They don't care
Banks and governments definitely do care because obviously they still aren't too happy about this whole crypto-thing (fear of loosing power, their grip on international finance and whatnot).
Now is it really that far fetched or tinfoilish to believe this dump is (partially/once again) their work? Buy several kBTC from some big chinese miner or steal them from drug markets, dump on the exchanges and enjoy the bad vibes all around crypto-town, watch the rats leave the ship. If rats are stubborn idealists, repeat until they do.
Our gubermints obviously have the gunpowder to pull this off, a million $ or two means absolutely nothing to those guys, for us it's a double-digit percentage drop. Well, repeat until... real scarcity kicks in. The only way to win is to keep playing this game
yeah of course they *could* do something like that , the central banks anyway i can buy that they'd be actively manipulating price / willing to burn a few million to preserve the stability of hundreds of trillions in fiat currencies value ... yeah for sure ... governments don't typically intentionally try to destroy trading markets , regulated or otherwise , especially ones as small as btc at a handful of billions in total market cap / that would be off books unregulated action on the part of most governments , logistically speaking ... seems like banks would care a lot more than governments and have the ability to act by comparison ... though at times the distinction between central banks and governments seems a thin one ... but if they truly wanted bitcoin to *DIE* (and drag all other cryptocurrencies with it) it'd be pretty easy to do so ... partition about 10 million dedicated to killing bitcoin ... consume bitcoins off book until you've got the 40 or 50 K btc you need ... slam the market , rebuy at lower , slam the market again , rebuy at lower , slam the market again , repeat until dead ... basically as long as you started with a large enough pile (1/3 the value of all bids on all markets seems like enough , probably , at about 10M) and didn't care that you were losing money in the process , you could simply bash the market repeatedly almost indefinitely ... that's what i'd be doing if i ran a central bank and wanted bitcoin to die ...