yes and no.
in my opinion it is always a battle. when we are talking about something like bitcoin that is well distributed then it is like a battle. there are a lot of whales, aka the early adopters, and there are a lot more big players with less amounts than whales and there are a lot more traders with regular amounts.
these groups don't work with each other. if someone or couple of them decide to go against the market or try to push it in other direction they will not succeed 100%.

as an example of failure you can see in the past months when price was rising from the $888 dip Bitstamp whales have been dumping the price in there but all the other exchanges were rising. finally the market won and price broke $1200 and continued rising.