I think the price of BTC is manipulated sometimes, because for bitcoin to move many billions of dollars are needed to take a direction and the truth is very few people in the world have that capacity, but in part it can be said that it is manipulated, I remember that in 2017 many traders or well many investors entered the market through bitfinex through pure shorts, and the idea was to take the btc from the weak hands when they panicked, because they would sell out of pure panic, it worked a lot for them, however I have not seen that movement until now.