We often heard about market manipulation in crypto market. It can be true for small cap, or coin that issue by exchange or for the token where most of that token hold by team. But we also heard it about Bitcoin and etherum, when price fluctuate in large scale. I don't understand how these large cap coin can be manipulate, when these coin are well distributed and decentralized?
I think it is not true, no one can prove that it is really manipulated by any group of people company or corps, it is only goes down and pump again because of some investors large or small do buy and selling, that is why there is a movement of the price depending on the volume of selling or buying pressure, i think manipulation is just a theory base on what people think and not on the reality.
distinguishing manipulation or genuine price movement it's hard though, can't really determine what really happen if we don't get any real data about who buys and who sell.
thing such as manipulation could definitely happen but I think it's only possible in a coin that has low trading volume since it costs less.
with BTC, it won't happen, even recent microstrategy large buys up of BTC that just happened recently only moved the price of BTC slightly, I don't believe there's any whale that could move the price, BTC recent price also seems natural and purely influenced by the news.
but if we look at CMC there are some low trading volume coin that suddenly got thousand percent of increase, it could just be a large spot buying or the project delivering some outstanding things.