It will not be easy for the elite to be able to manipulate the market, unless the elite is compact in making communities with each other so that market price movements are very influential because they have been manipulated. although Bitcoin is the crypto with the largest trading volume, the role of a group of whales can certainly influence the market price
Even 1 billionaire could give significant effect to the market like the obvious example is elon musk and by far the strongest weapons to affect the market are fud and shill. Any capital you spend to manipulate crypto will definitely get outweighed by these fuds and shill that takes next to none capital of yours. Though a group of whales could definitely affect the market if they make planned movement at the same time making their sell off or buying looks massive and gives sense of doom to many people psychologically like making the market fear of dumping.