Panickers sell their little $10-$100 holdings because they've invested what little they have (and can't afford to lose)
fully into BTC and they rather buy food or pay bills with it. They are losing sleep when their $100 investment temporarily turns into $85 and decide to cash out completely.
Whales with hundreds of millions worth of BTC have no better uses for fiat money, they already have enough stocks, bonds, apartments.
They keep buying out more and more small BTC investors.
Soon the BTC space will be no different from the 'real world' where a tiny group of people (possibly less than a hundred people) owns 90% of everything.
I don't mock small investors and I understand their concerns (most of them are impatient people from socioeconomically disadvantaged countries hoping to double or triple their money fast, and it just isn't going to happen).
But at the same time, they are fueling this development where a couple dozen people will soon own most of all bitcoins ever mined.
Yes, its the new people recently FOMO'ing into Bitcoin who cannot see past the now,
cannot look to the future or stop and consider what long term investors do in times
like this, i.e not panic.
The future could play out like you predict, the large scale investors will accumulate.