Looking at how the price moved this year, i think there's logic behind what you said dude and probably that's why all these speculations indicating that we'll bottom out at 4 or 3k isn't that valid. Whales and high holders have the say in this kind if market.
only to an extent. whales and large miners can withhold coins from the market, but nobody has this market cornered. and as the years go by, coins become more and more distributed. something like 5-10% of americans now own crypto. so the whales of yester-years really aren't as important anymore.
what matters most is all the supply from bagholders from 2017 (including institutions like novagratz' fund etc) and whether or not organic demand can outweigh that.
That's the big problem we are facing is the heavy supply weighing down from above. There needs to be more organic demand and not just algos driving the price up for short periods. I'm a bit worried about the future of bitcoin because of that. These futures contracts are no good in my opinion, and the ETF won't make a big difference either.
What would really help bitcoin is more trust and widespread adoption by major figures who actually use the coin for what it was intended for, rather than just quick swaps or pump & dumps.
The supply only increased because of the low buying demand. I think that if we attract some new investors in the market, they will start buying which will increase the bitcoin demand and therefore the supply start decreasing. I think we have very good example in 2017 when the demand was increasing from time to time and the supply was decreasing which caused the price to increase too much.