"I am pretty sure I am looking at some form of manipulation, I just do not fully understand it."

A 100%! For me personally SBD and HBD were/are the worst kind of "stable coins" in existence. Few people who know the inner workings of these shitcoins will know how to exploit it. I don't care about the exploit part, I just want One coin that represents Hive blockchain. That is why I'm not invested as much as I could be, or would I ever think about a larger move as long as this "stable coin" lives.