[mancerayder]

That's a very interesting and plausible hypothesis.

One wonders whether the prolonged slump might lead to some sort of bursting of outfits like Tether/Bitfinex. It seems like a downward spiral of people selling BTC and Bitfinex doing the dance you described, and a bigger hole being created.

[evilDagmar]

The other allegation (which is pretty viable) was with large reserves to play with, they could cause crashes or spikes in order to gobble up their users risky shorts. Shorts they would know the exact number and values of.