I think the market is really trading different from how it used to be. Maybe a certain class of traders packed their bags and left after the MtGox fraud? It just seems that there's no more real weight (as in volume and velocity) behind bounces after a sell-off. I'd love to see some of that come back..
Also consider that many of those traders had to walk away *without* their bags. It wasn't Bitcoins fault but if I had been Goxxed, I might shy away from Bitcoin for the taste it left in my mouth.
If I may posit another plausible theory:
I think it's a hell of a lot easier to create a bubble on a single exchange that had something like 80% of the trading market, than the 15+ exchanges we have worldwide today. Especially since a large number of those whale traders back then were concentrated on Mt Gox, and were probably colluding and working together to push the price up (Some of them reading this thread right now, hehe). Couple that with god knows what insider trading shenanigans and bots that Karpeles was running on that abomination of an exchange (to fake demand), likely trying hard to replace all the lost/stolen bitcoin, and China going bananas, and I think you have a perfect storm.
Would be much harder to recreate the same today. Especially with all the shorting and arbitrage, that didn't exist back in fall of 2013.
