Gregory, jsnip4 on YouTube had the following hypothesis: Wall Street managers get their Christmas bonuses the 2nd-3rd week of January. So they are using their bonuses and relationships with the owners of Coinbase et al to buy cryptos at pre-Christmas prices (-40-60% over the last two days).
This is how the Big Boys enter markets they like - not at normal prices, oh no, but at lowered prices that let them make the phenomenal returns that have been seen in BTC, LTC, ETH, etc. Coinbase/GDAX also had mysteriously small limits lifted and even the Exodus wallet had no "Unavailable" status on exchanging coins in their wallet, unlike earlier when people wanted to go from one altcoin to another during the dips.
So the little guy who got in early just had the Wall Street fat cats pull the train back a month's time to get in too.