Absolutely absurd. The Gnosis team was onto something smart with their auction idea, but their opening price was obviously way too low. It's completely insane - I thought for sure $30 was high enough.
Of course, the other way to look at it is that the bidders had absolutely no idea what they were doing. They were too shell-shocked from the botched (in the sense of way-too-cheap) Cosmos crowdsale and didn't stop to rationally evaluate the optimal bidding strategy.
Or, third option, I'm completely out of touch with what's really valuable in the world and I'll be left in the dust because I don't panic-buy these things. :) But I wouldn't be surprised to see $15 GNO by the end of the year.
The rumour is that poloniex might have bought a lot of them for bot trading. I am going to watch this one from the sidelines.
The exchanges do have a lot of power in this space. But I imagine that rumor will be very difficult to substantiate. In any case, like I've been saying, this has been / will be quite the spectacle.