Because I have a hard time believing that they are aware of this.

This is most likely true. Many traders operate in small groups and with limited supply they most likely see an easy to manipulate token, which is also rather down the marketcap rankings and thus more fun to play with.

I doubt most of those gamblers do even known about the debt mechanism. It’s just a game to many, or should that be to few crypto whales? Their interest is more likely the amount available on a specific exchange because there needs to be room to play when they initiate another pump. What is surprising with the fluctuation in SBD is often that pumps stay at a certain for extended period of time which means those playing dump slower than we tend to see with other tokens.