I think that it was really strange that in January when BTC went down all big cryptocurrency exchanges closed registration for new members and they opened it only when the price was low. Then at spring when the downtrend was broken(7000$) there were many news that cryptocurrency now will go up! But whales just made big shorts at 10 000 $and all the news said that cryptocurrency won't go up for along time and market went down to current position.
It is manipulated but not totally. Everyone of us holds the cryptocurrency and we are the one that will make the decision whether we sell it or not. There are also manipulation that happens in the market and we cannot avoid it. But as a wise trader, we should not be dependent on the current move of the price so that we can prevent of losing much of our investment.