I'd say if you look back at the "sustained rally based on fundamentals", there's a very strong corelation between the start of the rally and the start of BCST. Pirate has said he was "in control of the entire market" for the past 9 months, and that appears to be proving true.
This might sound plausible, since it flatters our own ego.
But frankly, that's an deception. We allways tend to give too much meaning to events. Markets follow a semi-natural pattern of oscillations and constrained forces. The individual maket participants are just like statists which happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Any halfway suitalbe event can serve to trigger a market movement which is iminent.
We all love being "in control"; it even makes us feel comfortable to imagine that someone else, someone "powerful" is in control
I don't know how I'm "flattering my [our] own ego" -- unless you're talking about Pirate, in which case I totally agree that he's completely egotistical (and likely also a con man). He talked big, got people to believe him, and now the only real question is if he'll actually pay out to most of his investors or just disappear.
Personally, I bought in and sold several times during the rise, making small profits. Then I bought some more at $13.20 just before the rocket up to $15.40, but I thought it might keep going and was asleep during the initial sell off. When I came back we were at $11.20. I expected an ititial rebound but miscalculated and ended up selling at $12.90 or something. Of course, I'm dealing with pitifully small sums here -- less than 50BTC amounts.
Anyway, all I'm saying is Pirate claimed something and the charts appear to back that up. Is he lying? Very possible, but without seeing his books none of us can really know. You're right that these things follow patterns and there's plenty of unpredictability. There's also the "herd mentality" thing, which ties into BCST: he starts it, says it's doing great, people invest and make profits, they get excited, and it all creates a snowball ponzi effect. Then when it hits the inevitable dead end of all ponzis, the herd panics and goes the other way. I wasn't sure it would collapse this badly when the first plunge happened, but now we're at <$8 and apparently in freefall. It's a bubble and a burst bubble now, sure, but was it a Pirate-induced bubble or not? I'm inclined to say he had a substantial impact on the bubble if nothing else.
The Bitcoin market is certainly small enough that large-scale manipulation is entirely possible -- someone with 400K BTC could easily push most other investors/speculators around. All you have to do is watch the big bid/ask walls come and go, often just out of reach, to know people are at least trying to manipulate. If you can successfully get people to fall for manipulation (e.g. large walls at $5 and $5.50, with you selling and buying on a 10% spread), you start with a bunch of coins and come out of it with even more.
