No, there is no evidence for your thesis. But what happened in around middle of the year, was many DDos attacks on poloniex during pumping dumping coins, so that users couldn't buy/sell them. The fast dumping pumping is also caused by trading bots. As I remember right, poloniex has forbidden them in their rules.
Day trading on cryptocurrencies is not senseful in my opinion. I research the currency and keep it for at least a few weeks.
Yes, i remember that, it happened to me when I tried to sell ripple. All trades stuck, no one couldn't sell anything but someone dump his ripple bag. It was very weird pump and dump if you ask me or any other trader who was there that day. I believe everything is possible, we don't really know what is going on behind scene.