So I suppose we could be talking about patterns, absent fairy godmother whales, b/c the fairy godmother whales are going to mess up any kind of pattern that may be the usual... .... but bitcoin seems to NOT be the usual b/c it does seem to be fairly easy to manipulate with just a few million dollars....... I recognize that manipulation also depends upon volume.. so seems to be easier to manipulate during times when there is less volume.... but the attempts to manipulate may draw other whales if the manipulator(s) is(are) NOT subtle about it.
you are thinking that whales are selling to drop the price so they can buy?
that is taking a huge gamble where already many longs have been squeezed, and selling is something nobody wants to do right now, especially whales.
the smart money is off the exchanges buying bitcoins from local bitcoins and such.
there are mostly smaller players left on these exchanges, and they are not worth the effort and risk for the whales to try and fool.
YOU may be correct about the dynamics that you describe, and I may be speculating beyond any reasonable semblance of knowledge that I have about how BTC price is being affected by trade; however, whether we like it or NOT, it seems to me that BTC prices are affected by exchange activities. It also seems to me that there may have been quite a bit of removal of money and BTC from exchanges b/c of the GOX collapse issue. Therefore, if there is less money on the exchanges, it takes less money to manipulate the BTC prices on exchanges and whales may want to engage in tactics to NOT show that they are manipulating BTC prices.. but still seems to me that there is a very, very, very large incentive to manipulate for some institutional investors, wealthy individuals (and even governments).
If there are invisible walls that do NOT let the prices go up.. then it may NOT cost very much to keep up those invisible walls.
Accordingly, maybe it is the paranoia in me, but I believe manipulation is taking place on exchanges, even though I may NOT be able to clearly articulate the mechanics of how it is done.. or how much profits and or losses take place through such manipulations.....
For example, if an institutional investor can manipulate prices, and it costs that institutional investor, let's say for argument sake 1 million to manipulate BTC prices downward.. but the institutional investor is able to acquire, 20,000 BTC for average of $500 per BTC rather than average of $650, then that institutional investor has just saved $2 million. $3million saved from purchase of coins at lower price at $1million cost to manipulate the market downward = $2 million profits overall. Surely the numbers work out differently with different quantities of BTC purchases. If an institutional investor wants to acquire 200,000 BTC, then multiply that by 10, and you get $30million savings and the institutional investor may be willing to take large losses on exchanges to keep the prices down and to save and to get 200,000 BTC at $500 average rather than $650 average.
In this regard, if, as you suggest, smart money is coming into BTC sphere through these various outside channels, they are likely using the exchange price to figure out how much they are going to be paying per BTC, no? So, even if they are NOT making their big purchases through the exchange directly, they are figuring out the price they will pay, based on some agreed to average which likely a reflection of the exchange prices.