Is this correct: this rally was started by a whale buyer on Bitstamp, then Huobi and BTC-e went into panic buying, but they are still struggling to catch up with Bitstamp?
Yes, and no. You're oversimplifying. The road for this rally was probably paved in the previous days (basically, since the 400 bottom). I misread the market up until the day before yesterday as well, and was too reluctant to admit I was wrong until this morning. As far as the *boom* we're seeing now goes: I guess you could say that a 1.2k buy at around 0:45 on stamp tonight sparked it. There was no comparable volume on Huobi, so it's fair to say that spark came from Bitstamp. Then again, China picked up the volume during the coming hours, pretty much in synch with stamp, so it's not a huge delay either.
Hope people remember this when they keep on harping about "bearstamp", and how traders on there only follow trends, never setting them
EDIT: 700, here we come again