The answer in the statistics of bitcoins of purses: the number of active purses increased from approximately 0.6 - 2.6 million in 2013 to 5.8-11.5 million in 2017.
And just over ten million people around the world are beatcoins.
This suggests that bitcoin is still very weak to talk about its independence, from control by anyone. If you consider that almost a third of all bitcoin is in China's whalers - do you think it's easy for them to control the bitcoin rate?
The reason is obvious - you need a lot more people who are interested in bitcoin, and will keep it.
And then control over bitcoin will be impossible.