The biggest sell-off that we had up to $160 in January - February was the same case. None of the biggest wallets haven't sold any bitcoins. So that means that people that were panicking were just a small fish.
I remember there was even an article about this in Cointelegraph it seems to me. So this is a pretty common case. Who has the most money doesn't worry that much about it I guess.
Happenings like that show me that many people seem to be over invested in Bitcoin.Otherwise I see no reason why they always panic selling. Someone who is rich and investing 1 million dollar will not care that much because he can afford it.
But someone with an average income and maybe buying Bitcoin for 1k should also be able to afford it. So this shows me that rich or not there are always a few more guys who might have taken more risk and money, might be because of hope and greed, than they should had. This results in bearish times in crazy panic selling and therefore price declining and in bullish times in crazy price explosions because of panic buying.
Anecdotally, I'd say you're probably right. Just reading forum posts from random participants, it does seem like quite a few people have invested large portions of their income/holdings in what is a purely speculative play with tons of price volatility.
There are lots of ways to play it. A person can do well buying low and selling high. Some people (not me) can probably do well trading based on technical indicators. A person can do well HODLing, probably, for the long term.
But where people get into trouble is when their strategy isn't well-formed and consistent. They buy, probably OVERbuy, intending to HODL. Then they see the price go down, sometimes whooshing down, sometimes trickling down, and then they get nervous looking at (unrealized) losses so they sell. They've changed from HODLers to panic sellers...buying high, and selling low. If they hadn't overbought in the first place or if they just realized the nature of a speculative play, they could stay in it.