There certainly is opportunity for major traders to manipulate the price, and for exchange operators. Stage a denial of service attack against the biggest excha

There certainly is opportunity for major traders to manipulate the price, and for exchange operators. Stage a denial of service attack against the biggest exchanges, or spread media FUD and watch the price temporarily tumble. Start buying and boost the price, sell and repeat. It's getting harder to manipulate now though with more decentralized trading, but a year ago you could blast just 2 exchanges offline and affect the price. Btcchina and MtGox, and since Gox left ports wide open this was easy to do. Exchange operators could also fix the price if they wanted. There's nothing that prevents them from making hundreds of fake accounts on their own exchanges and bidding the price up or down since they are unregulated. They could even be pgp emailing each other to coordinate this for all we know.