who is left in the market?

[ambar33n]

Who owns Bitcoin today?
We know there was a massive transfer of wealth in December and January. But honestly.
Who owns crypto today?
I’ve been in Bitcoin since February 2015, and bought my first Bitcoin for $227. I then told all my friends to buy Bitcoin and get on. No one listened until we hit about $2500 in the summer of 2017. Then everyone was calling me and asking me how to get in on this.
Many of my friends got in. Now my friends have no idea how the blockchain works or anything and were just trying to make money. They do not resemble how our community looked back before 2017 (although maybe closer to how it looks today)
Anyways, all my newbie friends, now in mid 2018, don’t love Bitcoin as much. But they fall into two camps.
Guys that sold off. The ones that got in around $2000, mostly sold off around the $8000 to $12,000 range and all super happy. But they’re out and thank me all the time. They love seeing the price drop and are thinking about getting in, if it keeps going down and stops dropping 10% in one day.
Others believe in it after seeing December and are holding, and hoping for a repeat of December 2017 or believe Bitcoin is the future. These guys are holding They won’t be selling unless we skyrocket or they just see it as a crazy gamble and enjoy it (but not so much lately)
This comes to my point. To me, with Bitcoin sitting at $6000. I find it super hard to see any retail investor outside of these two camps. I mean the guys like me that have been in since 2015 sold some (I started selling at $2500) but probably still hold some like me as well because we believe in the project plus the very real opportunity that this will jump to $85,000 or higher come 2020.
But … my question is this. WHO IS SELLING ?
Who is in Bitcoin today, and seen the price just get destroyed, and now they are like…. “Now I will sell at $6000” …. uh .. what? You had six months to sell, why now finally? Please explain this to me. I just feel like anyone who wanted to get out is out.
The guys in now are the holders or the believers or the day traders. Or they're brand new. I just don’t see anyone in, who is saying, “well, if we hit $4500, I’m gone”, but I do know a lot of people saying “if we hit $4500, I am coming back in” or they are getting in now.
The other thing is this. With all the media, start ups, ICOs, etc etc. This crypto space is so much bigger than it was last summer. We're only up 300% in a year? How is that possible? Binance has gone from 2m to 9m customers just in 2018. I mean that is 450% growth.
Maybe I am living in a bubble.

So is the market just so manipulated by one or two massive whales nothing I am saying matters?
Or am I just wishful thinking and we're headed back to $227 when I started?

[Kiran Sehzadi]

According to what you wrote and pretty much consistent with my own observations, Main Street is not participating at all. Neither sell nor buy, simply does not care.

On the other hand we got shit load of ICOs with shit load of BTC that they have to sell to pay expenses, we got early adopters (or whoever those nice gentlemen were) who dumped 30B worth of BTC in December and now have shit load of fiat thinking what to do with it. We also have asian groups pumped and dumped shit load of alts in January and we know absoulutely nothing about them neither about their BTC/fiat ratio nor about their plans.

Those barts that we saw recently are easy profits by rekting traders, but still it's a zero sum game, the bigger picture is that now whales are trading with each other, redditors watch and profit/rekt and normal people don't care at all.