I didn't say a word about China. This is strictly technical. The end of a trend needs to be marked with an increase in volume.
I would not wait for an increase in volume, I don't think it will ever come.
Mt Gox ruined that trust, these exchanges are just too amatuer. Nobody feels comfortable putting large amounts of fiat/coins into them anymore. Large buyers and sellers will wait for institutional level exchanges, and in the meantime the buying will happen through Second Market, dark pools, and directly from miners.
There won't be an uptick in volume on Bitstamp, the stream of coins coming in for sale will slowly dwindle as the off chain buying increases. You will wait for large volume, but suddenly there will hardly be any coins for sale. Buying on Stamp-level exchanges will be for small fish and last-resort larger traders.
Nailed it.
So what happens to price under this scenario? Price slowly trickles upward due to lack of coins, without volume?
It will trickle slowly at first, because experienced bitcoin traders will scoff at such a low volume rally. Then panic will grow as they notice that the sell walls are not being replaced. Price will then rocket on the low volume of traders who still use these exchanges. The hole these traders will be trying to fit through will be much smaller than anticipated because large buyers have cut off the stream of coins for sale nearer to the source.
I really do NOT have any significant dispute with the practice that you are describing; however, I remain concerned that BTC prices seem to continue to be set by the exchanges.
Accordingly, it remains easy and inexpensive to transfer BTC around, including quickly transferring BTC to any exchange, and if there is NOT much fiat on these various exchanges, the BTC that is transferred onto the exchanges can purposefully be used to manipulate BTC prices downward. So, even though it may NOT be profitable to sell the BTC on the exchange at the lowered price, BTC could be bought off of the exchanges at the purposefully lowered exchange price.
Hopefully someday soon BTC price can be reflected by overall supply and demand of BTC rather than price manipulation that seems to be based on the ease of moving BTC as compared with the difficulties and expense in moving fiat.
