People simply rely on the predictions of those people who have history of making appropriate predictions. Most of the times, these prediction makers are the ones who have deep connections with the teams of coin projects and are in touch with the whales who are capable of making hug changes in the market. In addition to this, we cannot ignore their significant market and technical knowledge. In short, not everyone can make predictions. People follow these mentors for predictions.
I would not doubt what you have said here because that is what is happening, and this is the main thing that makes me not to pay much attention to some of these public figures that are just coming up to predict prices, create fud or fomo to just say things that will be in their own favor and you see lots of people believing so much in them and thinking their own value is the most accurate one.
Listening to peoples opinion will only miss guide us, and we should learn to always do a proper analysis on the market ourselves, because whoever we say are expert in predicting the value of bitcoin are not the expert that we think they are, but manipulators who are also working with some of these terrible whales. I have learnt to just study them and know when to get to the market through them.