Especially to those who think Gold price is manipulated (for which there is in fact quite some evidence): I think the BTC price is massively manipulated as well.
Why?
After the recent rise and the >20% selloff there is almost no movement at all now, because large BTC stakeholders (like "first generation holders" - you get the idea) who don´t want a further selloff keep supporting the price at this level (900$). Some cashed out partially and use the money to keep buying at these levels. These are presumably those who still have huge amounts of BTCs and whose interest is not a further selloff which would be of course detrimental to the investors trust which had built up slowly over the recent months, even more so as investment fonds and other players are at the edge of entering BTC.
Also manipulation is even more easy compared to other assets due to the limited liquidity.
Or maybe "manipulation" is a word too strong, it is rather just using the illiquid market to direct the BTC price? In any case volatility seems very low at the moment. What do you think? Happy to get proven wrong.