Manipulation cannot be ruled out. We do understand that there are big players in the market that can move the market and I believe so it is for other financial markets only this time, the crypto market is not regulated like the stock market so these whales can pretty much do what they want since they have the funds.
Yes, manipulation still exist in the cryptocurrency market, but in Bitcoin I don’t think it is as much as it used to be before. It has reduced and now it is altcoins that are mainly the target of price manipulators. I know that there are billionaires that have enough money to kind of manipulate the market to the direction they want, they can push it up by setting a buy option, and they can as well put a sell option to make the market to fall.
But, it wouldn’t be as much as it used to be, because now the market is stronger than it was before. But manipulation is usually being found everywhere, there will always be people who are attempting to manipulate things in favor of themselves whenever possible.