Say a group of rich investors got together and intending to buy huge amounts of bitcoin with the intention to one day crash the market. Say they told other investors of their plan deception and they bought into the idea. They done this for a while making the price of bitcoin soar. If they all collectively cashed in on their bitcoins and told people/ warned people and fooled them into doing the same via news articles, websites and other forms of mainstream exposure. Could they theoretically cause enough of a collapse to then buy the bitcoins back at a low price and wait for it to boom again makinf a huge profit or am I totally missing the point?
It is plausible, but begs the question. If these whales are dumping 100s of BTCs at a time, they would have to run out, or buy back at some time. Do you suspect they are manipulating in both directions? I suspect the longer the adoption rate of Bitcoin remains below a critical threshold, the longer we will be exposed to the demons and phantoms.