One of small the altcoins - ReddCoin recently went from a market cap of ca. $600k to ca. $1m in two days, and everyone were inventing reasons for why. Except it was very simple: Someone had bought about $5k worth to pay his staff 1 week of salary in RDD (there was some tax advantage where he is to treating it as a "bonus" in something not recognised as a currency locally so they had an immediate advantage, and his company is crypto coin related).
Even for such a small coin, $5k was well below the typical daily trade volume. But here's the thing: He very rapidly bought off pretty much all the sell orders at 4 satoshi, and everyone started speculating what happened and prices shot through the roof, even though more coin than that enters the supply in no-time through mining still.
Point being that coins worth a typical daily trade volume can be enough to trigger large reactions in markets that are priced so extensively based on speculation about how other speculators will behave (take a look at the chat at various exchanges, and see the amount of chatter about which coin to buy into because they expect a pump or other forms of manipulation - very little of the chat seems to be related to non-speculative uses of the currencies).
Even for such a small coin, $5k was well below the typical daily trade volume. But here's the thing: He very rapidly bought off pretty much all the sell orders at 4 satoshi, and everyone started speculating what happened and prices shot through the roof, even though more coin than that enters the supply in no-time through mining still.
Point being that coins worth a typical daily trade volume can be enough to trigger large reactions in markets that are priced so extensively based on speculation about how other speculators will behave (take a look at the chat at various exchanges, and see the amount of chatter about which coin to buy into because they expect a pump or other forms of manipulation - very little of the chat seems to be related to non-speculative uses of the currencies).