Have you considered that despite the low price of last couple of months most miners kept mining (presumably at a loss) ?
Now the price rose to levels where they can pay off electricity.
I'd guess this is a pretty strong force against a bullish crowd.
Yes, miners have continued to mine and one of the points I was trying to make is that the data would seem to show that many of these coins have been held off the markets, considering the large divergence between total supply and the supply levels on MtGox - to the tune of almost 250,000 btc. Now that the price has risen, I would expect at least some of these coins to show up soon.
Believe me... I have looked at every chart you can imagine and came up with a few of my own too. Yep, it has been a pretty strong month, but we all know what follows strong rallies and we also know that logarithmic advancements are unsustainable.
I am not trying to predict anything about the uptrend, other than trying to illustrate the fact that there is persistently more selling going on than buying and highlighting the stark divergence of supply on mtgox to the total number of bitcoin in existence. I don't have the data from the beginning of the rally, but this is behavior that occurs at the top of a peak, not the bottom.
Notice that falls have been sharply and abruptly corrected over the past few weeks, even sometimes in contradiction of the RSI and MCAD indicators which then turn out strangely kinked. I know that these indicators are of questionable value in a market as small as this, but despite that, many people still rely on them to make their trading decisions.
Also, the price is yet to fall below the support.
Once it's below 4.2 or so you MAY be on to something.
But for now, i think your imagination has the upper hand.
Sure, there is possibility for manipulation, but this has a limit and the price fluctuates (at the moment) within a channel.
No need for mass panic or paranoid accusations yet.
You have indeed said it, manipulation has a limit and there is only so long that market participants can be hoodwinked before it becomes too costly to continue. I think we are reaching that limit (if we have not already) and am seeing many signals of an overbought market. What is the point of waiting until a fall back to 4.2 to act? The whole point is to try and assess the status of the market in advance of large movements. I prematurely sold at $4.3, but had still made 95% profit on my trade so was happy to exit at that point.
As I have already said, buyers are currently being fleeced at $5 prices. I don't have any inside information to back up my claim of manipulation, but considering what has been going on over the past 6 months, I don't think any of us are in any doubt that it is occurring. I think the $2.20 support is going to be re-tested over the coming weeks because despite the slow and steady uptrend over the past month, I think has been largely unconvincing and it could easily represent a change in manipulative strategy rather than true growth. If it has been true growth, what exactly is it that has been driving it? Nothing has changed as far as I can see. I think we all need the assurance of a bottom before the price can rise much further.