I can understand your friend and his reservation towards Bitcoin. Back in the days you could aquire a large amount of bitcoins very cheaply and quickly. These so called whales have a huge power over the bitcoin market and influence price considerably. However, this is not really something new, in the stock market there are huge investment managers and hedge funds than hold large parts of companies and can influence the prices heavily too. If someone like Warren Buffet decides to buy or a sell a company this is going to send the price flying. In my opinion this is not necessarily a bad thing, just because a few rich people own large parts of bitcoin doesn't mean that they want to push the price down. Long term the whales are interested in high prices as they can sell some of their coins and make huge profits. A low bitcoin price doesn't help the whales and price manipulation are not going to last forever.