The recent activity suggests to me that the bidders bots (banksters?) are doing a good job at tricking the sellers bots (lucky early adopters) down the road to the lower supports.
The demand is there, it's just moving back away from the ticker. This is quite obvious on bitcoinity tool:
http://bitcoinity.org/markets?exchange=allAny btc earned is immediately transferred to the the selling market depth, it kills the usual sinusoidal bounce observed in other regular big transaction.
The bot owner secures a comfortable profit while breaking on any further rally.
I doubt the chase going on is just panic.
I'd guess someone with loads of btcs left his bot driving down the market chasing the lower biggest bid.
Hopefully he realises it soon enough. In the mean time, I also hope a lot of people are getting in and will share the profit with those smart bots