Can you pump Steem to $1 or even $10 and profit from it even this bear market, if you are a multimillionaire with deep pocket?
Or, If you have $10M, can you pump Steem to $1 and make a floor for a year even in this crappy bear market for altcoins.
These are the questions I am thinking a lot! These kinds of investors are called market marker. They can push a value of an asset such as stocks or cryptocurrencies to a certain level and keep there for their advantages.
The question is how far they can go.
Can they apply the same method to push the price of an crappy asset during the bear market?
To best of my understanding, the market makers (i.e. whales) are smart enough to avoid crappy assets. They move with the flow of the market.
Consider the stock AMD. Recently, it reached $42.94 from $1.8 in 2015. However, its all time high was in 2000's dot com bubble at $46.44. It sounds like Steem's story but in longer time span.
Interestingly, on Friday (13th December, 2019) SPX500 index reached all time high but AMD is down 3.4%. How this is possible? The answer is probably the few market makers who pushed AMD to $27 to $43 in two months took out some profit. These market makers (e.g. investing banks, hedge funds etc.) move with flows, create patterns, buy early and push the price when it slows down, then retail traders FOMOs to it bigger highs. Then these market makers cashed out in the unimaginable time, such as SPX500's ATH.
The cryptocurrency market is hotbed of pump and dump. I was lucky to see them in front of eyes in now defunct BTC-E exchange. It was the biggest exchange of altcoins: on that time for Litecoin (LTC), PeerCoin (PPC), NameCoin (NMC), PrimeCoin (XMC), FeatherCoin (FTC) etc.
There was a legend market maker or some call him PnD guru Fontas. He used to arrange PnD in altcoins. Everybody tried to follow him to make some profit. There was a famous trollbox where traders can live chat. Even LTC founder Charlie Lee used to be frequent there. I knew a guy who had almost million LTC on that time.
Yes, the marketcap is small and it has a base followers, pump and dump is quite possible.
And, PnD may still be rampant for some top100 cryptos and newer, hot ICOs. For example, Matic rose to 180% and then dumped up to 77% due to the actions of those market makers.
Now the question is that can Steem be pumped to $1 and stay there for eons. Yes, it is possible if there is a big enough whale such as Winklevoss.
I believe EOS has reached $2-$2.5 floor due to actions of some big market makers. The top three block producers are the big exchanges 
In case of Steem, it has not been able to attract such large market makers. For example, CoinMakerCap competitor @CoinGecko is a witness but they don't have big pocket.
Now think that 
The answer of these questions is yes: it is quite possible for Steem to reach higher floors if the big enough market makers or whales take stake in Steem.
One little example is already in work. The rumor 
Disclaimer: This opinion is not a financial advice, it my personal perspective and opinion. Please seek professionals for financial decisions. This opinion is only for educational purpose.
Image sources: Most images are open sourced (e.g. Pixabay, Wikimedia etc.) with Creative common license. Some images are used with due courtesy to respected owners.
Thanks for reading.
Cryptominer , occasional trader and tech blogger since 2013
