I Agree Whale Manipulation sucks... but where is the difference to ETH and LSK outside of the TA PoV? ... ain´t putting out the media hype ETH and LSK have + ICO Style Liquidity ( before sth even was delivered! ) are some kind of whale manipulation too, because those people got the networks to create the buzz?
LIBOR (trillion+ dollar market) was/is whale-manipulated. If anyone thinks that
any of these little cryptos including Bitcoin but certainly any of the others that are 1+ orders of magnitude smaller than BTC aren't whale manipulated, you are delusional. If anything XMR is (a little) less whale-manipulated than most because it is probably better distributed.
Welcome to the real world.
Agree that XMR is not "hot" right now and is largely ignored, which will make it hard for any kind of rally to occur. It will likely experience continued low volatility and some price weakness (at least relative to BTC) until there is something to spark renewed market interest. All the focus is on Lisk, Eth, small cap players are looking at Sia, etc.
Not talking my book, FWIW. My XMR book hasn't changed significantly in many months.