As someone who used to "play" with the Maketplace, I can say that the removal of gold protection totally killed the fluctuations of the FSP Market. There used to be huge swings of 20k or more gold per FSP over the course of a couple hours, of which if you sat on the MP as your only objective on FS for that night, even someone like me who had a modest pool of a few hundred FSP on hand could walk away 80 or more FSP richer if you were willing to sit there for 5-8 hours with it.
PvP protection removing gold has removed the frequency of and amount of people sitting in the MP...but not the prices thereof.
I can speak from not having any intrest in playing on the MP anylonger that there is almost no profit in it to be had. Logical price postings sit there for 10 hours or more due to frantic posters listing at 200k or more at times to outoffer by 10k+ per fsp.
People are overreacting to the risk these days, so they post absurdly higher amounts above the highest listed prices for literally no reason, which then causes sellers of FSP to sit and wait out for a fat offer of 205k x 25 like I swiped the other night.
It's not manipulation, rather it's total paranoia of the players. I assure you, what went on beforehand was manipulation. I'd nerf the MP by 10-20k per dot and it'd take 2-3 days to get back to it, rinse-repeat. Now... I'm rarely even bothering. I'll just eat my take from donations/titan hunting and use that to help my guild.
Only people making a profit in MP are uber-loaded merchants with too much time on their hands IRL. Me? I work full time and go to college, so not going to waste time letting them profit off of me. Anyhow... it's not price setting, it's paranoia that's the case. Just sit on the MP for a few hours refreshing and you'll see the frantic postings for 10k+ gold higher pop up.
Edit: As to the listings being so small in number at times.... just look at the amount of guilds with absurd guild banks, not all of that sudden surge of big bank guilds is from guild tax. I regualrly dumped fsp to make large deposits to my guild last year. I'm pretty confident some are doing that as well to boost the guild's banks a nice chunk.
Edited by Gutie, 15 March 2014 - 07:21.

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