Maybe this guy has another $250,000 where that came from?
Count on it!
I've seen that strategy before. Put up a giant wall. Let it get sold into. Then buy into the asks and hope you can get the guy that sold to you to buy back in a panic and push the price up really high.
I just remember the $2.9, 50k wall. It was (at least mostly) sold through then another one popped up at $2.10 after we hit $1.99 and it followed the price back up 'till the $4's before disappearing for months. Then it made a comeback at $4.70. The guy has a LOT of money, so should not be surprising if it is seen again.
Do you guys think the biggest moves like these came from leverage (bitcoinica?) or just straight up cash?
My guess is that the biggest players never visited bitcoinica, but that is just my opinion.
I don't know that bitcoinica ever posted up limit orders on the Gox book. That said, I don't think that particular order was leveraged. However, I do think big players used bitcoinica though, why wouldn't they?
The drop to $1.99 was a bitcoinica incident, though it was due to mass forced liquidation of leveraged longs. Otherwise, we never would have seen such a price at the time. It was basically an over-correction from the $32 high. Without leveraged shorts, we probably would not have went lower than $3-5
