~snip~
As bitcoin becomes more popular and larger, price manipulation may become more difficult. Given what's going on, bitcoin is still a very small cap, so manipulating bitcoin price is hard for retail investors but for sharks, it's too easy for them. Sharks, market makers, cannot manipulate the bitcoin network, but price manipulation is what we see happening. If the price of bitcoin moved according to supply and demand, there would never have been such large fluctuations. All financial markets have manipulation, but with bitcoin, it happens more because it is still small, without any regulation.
Yeah, Bitcoin market cap is actually quite small when you compare it to other things in the economy. For example a single company in the US, Apple, has way more market cap than Bitcoin.
And the IMF printed out of thin air 650 billion US dollars in 2021, which is more than the Bitcoin market cap:
https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2021/07/30/pr21235-imf-governors-approve-a-historic-us-650-billion-sdr-allocation-of-special-drawing-rights