Could it be that it’s just a natural one what you see or referr to as a malcious market maker?
I mean in all my calculations the inflation just influences too much, means whatever uptrend we may get in it can’t last due the low demand but high supply. I mean daily get so many new ZEC into circulation that it’s quiet possible that this is the reason that this interferes with the painted charts/grapsh/technical indicator that are based on past performance or take past performance into account.
But a lot has changed meanwhile and that’s why i see currently indicators/charts/graphs that are soley or partly based on past information as very unsecure for predictions.
For example some take into account volume, but that’s a mainly faked/unreal one in the past.
Or the speculative (pumped) price which can temporary be generate and temporary “replace” the law/demand economic law. Immediatly after the “pump” is stopped the law of demand/supply immediatly takes again place and corrects the market prices.
The next “natural” thing that comes into my mind is that it could be even a result of bigger ZEC recepients unloading immediatly if the price shows some gain which makes of course some sense IF costs have to be paid. This could be bigger mining facilities, but even ECC/Founders/ZF as these receive bigger amounts of ZEC as well and must liquid these soon or late but frequently as well. This could be impact the market harder currently for 2 reasons:
When the price is higher less ZEC has to be converted/exchanged to result in covering the same USD maintance cost.
In the past more demand was presented which softens the unloading.
Just some theories and hyptotesisis how it could be a natural result of some other circumstances. I didn’t investigate it further and have no time for it anyway. But i think these could be valid options and possibilities as well that create some kind of bull traps or look like a malcious market maker, but are actually an unintentional side-effect. But of course a malcious market maker is not to be excluded as well.
“malicious” marketmaker came in may to temporary reverse a trend.) actually, there’s no malicious marketmakers. marketmakers just act for their own profit. short and long term. they dont care whether you are on same side with them or not. as for price action - charts are pretti same for every altcoin, not zcash only. today sentiment is gravely not only about zcash either. but about the most of alt market. and its reasonable. as far as i see, marketmaker and/or major buyers ocassionally intervene from the… buy side of zcash to protect it from stronger plunge. so, for now situation is pretty simple. if you think zcash is not dead, has (some) future and all current efforts of team and other involved parties not just an imitation - then accumulate slowly, some relief rally and or next (mini) cycle with alts also can happen, as it happened with btc. and zcash is one of altcoins that actually has some usecase, purpose, tech and endorsement. if you think that zcash is dead, cryptocoin story is over and this bleed will continue until delistings and/or market closures - then just sell and save some bucks. its market after all. there’s no free lunch.
jesus. dude. tape painting is applicable for the alive periods of market. now zcash market is on life support. just periodic mini pumps till previous support turned resisance on zecbtc. on zecusd it just tries now to get some ground after recent knockdown. almost same action for other majors.
MM is malicious when they paint the tape in a harmful manner. normal MM doesn’t care about market swings - they make loot from the buy/sell spread. this MM actively downticks our markets, etc. this is not a normal MM. not going to argue about this because i’ve been fighting with this entity just about everyday since early 2017. several occasions we even started upticking entity’s downticks. have a good one!
i don’t think the market maker is an individual but more likely a conglomerate…I think 40 is a was their bottom.
Also it’s been pretty quiet from the NY-AG although I still think something is bubbling behind the scenes. I read yesterday that they are still requiring Bitfinex to produce documentation and the judge dismissed their claim that the AG lacks jurisdiction over Bitfinex. I think I’m the only person who’s brought this up on the forum, not much discussion around this…I’m uncertain if the community understands the weight of what this could mean. This would be like Mt. Gox injected with hulk serum.
finex is not that big and important for markets as it was even year ago. and they already appealed today. so they are trying hard to prolong their and tether’s lifetime. so even if finex will be gone at some point, there wouldn’t be gox-like impact. neither for btc nor for zcash. zcash is gemini native.)
You forgot their LEO token.
Tether with $4,047,378,070 and LEO with $1,310,779,508 + Bitfinex itself would have quiet an impact in my opinion, leave alone the damage to all the other crypto projects.
leo is a problem of leo holders. and i highly doubt that there are even same order of real money peg in leo as they declare. tether impact, imho, was pre-priced in with 2018 crash. so, ofc departure of finex will damage prices. but not near gox magnitude. there’s already some other big casinos, scamfactories, fiat onramps. main possible vector of next market possible market decline/crash (with btc, alts are still on the ground), as i see now, may be that main beneficiaries and orchestrators of this year’s bitcoin rally will get more greedy then market can eat. and then will emerge byzantine generals problem. that is solved by algo consensus. but not human.)
it was not priced in. 2018 crash was mostly “investors” who bought past 5k panic selling. i think the market is too naive to price in Tether manipulation. Why should it? there are currently no repercussions for blatant fraud so its business as usual.
Tin-foil hat: I believe ZEC is perfectly positioned to capitalize on any major event that comes out this. Its the only project (as far as i know) that has most the US banking regulators behind their back(and the foundation is a 501c3). Its legitimacy would be hard to disprove. It would make sense for a conglomerate to artificially suppress the price before such an event to:
a.) Deter non-insiders by controlling market sentiment
b.) Stack as much you possibly can to be major player in ZEC markets indefinitely.
ZEC sentiment has pretty much always been negative so you’ve effectively discouraged millions(even on this forum) of BTC maximalists.
As anyone been paying attention to the StarkWare breakthroughs with their DEX technology? I believe StarkWare’s successes point a bright future for zcash.
Not sure if that is relevant…MIGHT actually be a conflict of interest. Bottom line, the two entities share founding scientists. Id say its reasonable that technologies/ideas are being shared.
Reason? 
I dont know