Very good analysis Mat, I'd like to voice my speculation on WHO the manipulators are and WHY they act as they do.

First off WHO, the simple answer is 'deeper pocketed versions of the same zealots who have been railing against you in this thread', I know this seams almost anti-climactic doesn't it.  You normally think of manipulation as being done by people who are fundamentally different from the 'small fry' both in the depth of their pockets AND a more 'predatory' nature.  We don't expect manipulators to be delusional zealots but in BTC I think they are.  First off we know for sure the big holders of BTC are early adopters who drank the kool-aid very early, these folks have now accumulated sums of USD in the several million range (all still on exchanges mind you) and they thus have leverage on both sides to control the price.  'New' investors might come in with huge sums of USD but they can never match the BTC holdings of the early adopters so they can't do the kind of narrow-holding range manipulation your seeing, they can only cause a price spike as China effectively did when it entered the market.

And the WHY should be evident from some of the posts earlier, the manipulators feel they are 'saving' BTC from the evil forces of the Persian Army  THIS IS BITCOIN!!!  HODL!!!!!  This meme is very telling, we see that people equate the price of BTC with the success of BTC, this view is reinforced by the detractors that call BTC a bubble.  If the supporters 'HODL' the price up high enough then they are 'right' about BTC and everyone else is wrong, and most importantly their Libertarian wold-view is right and everyone else is wrong.  And these people see libertarian/Austrian economic theory as something that needs to be promoted and defended at any cost.  All of this is to ultimately as you said yourself fell that this is the "result of something inherently great about themselves", an ego trip that completely validates their political beliefs and ideologies.

Now what dose this mean for the long run price, are they preparing to crash the market some day and leave the rest of us holding the bag.  NO!!  These people will WILLINGLY go down with the ship if BTC ever finally tanks, nigh they would flaunt their martyrdom saying they 'lost everything because they had FAITH and held to the end, if only the wretched weak-handed fools had not crashed the price of BTC we could have defeated the evil gobermint and the FED and the USD and ushered in a libertarian Ann Randtopia!!!  The know that a fast-crash attempt to empty the exchanges and exist with the USD will net at most a ~40 million in exchange CREDITS which have very little chance of actually being redeemed for real USD at that scale, indeed most of the credits are on Gox which may not even be solvent and which will de-facto force them to put thouse credits back into the market, so for the whales BTC is like a tuna-net in the ocean, they can swim around and seem liquid but are really quite constrained, they realized their BTC AND exchange-credit wealth is illiquid and they like it that way, weakness should be PUNISHED not rewarded after-all (I wouldn't be the least surprised if their are intentional retaliations against anyone who breaks ranks and tries to cash-out).  So they are happy to just get a trickle of USD as they so very slowly sell, it's still enough for them to practically live off and it's more then they deserve anyways so why not keep this whole BTC thing going as long as possible, when it looks like 'stability' is what is needed then they create stability until it looks like another crop of new adopters is ready to be lured in, to them BTC is like that Spartan army doing a simple 'charge', 'fallback (as little as possible) and 'hold' pattern, claiming 'ground' is the goal and ground is measured in exchange rates.

The question is now, can they keep this up?  And for how long?  I think it will eventually break them, the waning availability of new suckers, the exodus of China, and the declining profitability of mining hardware which will force more coins to flow into exchanges will exert enough pressure to break out of this ~850 band and bring a correction down to a more sustainable level.  Sustainable here simply meaning how much actual USD per day that libertarians can find out of their own pockets to throw at buying up the ~5k new BTCs per day that come into existence.  This should not be confused with the LONG term sustainability issue which involve a whole slew of legal and economic factors beyond the scope of just throwing USD purchases at BTC.  But for the short and mid term I feel we will see corrections in which small fry run for the doors but whales do not.

U reckon a huge bet placed, possibly with insider info on how the NY hearings are going to go?

U are making my fingers twitch over the all-in long button here!

That was a record breaking volume required to devour a massive Ask wall that had accumulated at the $820 range.

I doubt for a second that this surge in volume, 900 BTC worth of it occurring in one fell strike, the majority of the rest of it hitting within two seperate 1 minute candles, was the result of irrepressible mass public appetite for $820 Bitcoin.

I will concede that I don't know what the fuck is happening here but it reeks of fish.

A 1500 strong Ask wall (on Bitstamp) should not be getting devoured in these conditions, with so much uncertainty surrounding Bitcoin just around the corner, but it was. So this is surely a bullish signal? That was around 3 million worth of USD trade done at these prices. That was some serious money getting into the game, wasn't it not?

........Or was it just a syndicate of whales playing pass the parcel with a big bunch of Bitcoins?

I would like to have a track record of the accounts operating on the exchanges during these crucial, crunch, and entirely unexpected and unpredictable turns of trading momentum. I guess this is why this stuff must be made public domain on real exchanges, in order to give market participants a clearer view if what is going on behind the trades.

There are powerful forces at work that are determined to keep Bitcoin upheld during this time and I have decided that it isn't wise to bet against them and am fortunate enough to be getting out almost breaking even in doing so. I won't be betting with them either as they have an 'enemy' in the far east that although perhaps not powerful enough to bring them down completely, is certainly powerful enough to tear lumps out of them.

I used to have an ideological view of Bitcoin and was actually amongst the 'early adopters' or users rather, but unfortunately for me I never held onto any of the hundreds of sub $10 Bitcoins that I have bought in the past and I now view Bitcoin as a nasty pernicious vapour asset that will invariably either be killed off, or end up being cornered and controlled by the usual suspects. Freedom it aint going to be, quite the opposite infact.

Because of the aforementioned 'Yellow Peril' that powerful USD based entities are moving to protect Bitcoin against, I think the wisest thing for any Johnny come lately investor to do is sit back and wait. The whales are making great efforts to hold Bitcoin at this level, but the dragon has not even started to breath its fire down on Bitcoin, yet.

Woo....my stop loss got called at 820 when the whales devoured their own monstrous Ask wall.

That is an 18 *4 Dollar loss for me.

I am so sad.

true

Can anyone explain the $200 difference with Gox?

Wow, I am so glad about this news, that I just doubled down on my maxleverage martingale shotring strategy.
I think from now on I will perform this strategy also on a daytarding basis, as proudhon so excellently suggested.

$828!!! SHORT HARDER

To be stung, one must expose themselves to the stingers. Keep on showing your leveraged tits! Those juicy melons are prime stinging fodder.

Very interesting. And it backs up what any rational person can guess already: that China understands the significance of Bitcoin and will not simply ban it.

I hope you all shotred Bitcoin as proudhon told you. 

There were some good times when you said you'll quit posting ultrabearcrap here....