yeah true what you say that more and more users bitcoin it will be increasingly difficult for traders to manipulate prices,
which is why the adoption will be very important because many users will make bitcoin become stronger
Treating bitcoin as a currency is enough to make such difficulty in bitcoin price manipulation.
Also with the lots of distributed coins today, the most amount of coins are not only on those big hoarders. Well since manipulation is kinda difficult today in bitcoin, they can still start a panic in some of the big exchanges that will result for a price increase or decrease. Up to others now if they will follow the trend.
You have the point with it and I think we are the ones who are manipulating the price of bitcoin so if there is high demand for bitcoin.
Then that is going to make the price increase and if there is more supply then that will make the demand lower and it will affect the price.
Just apply the law of supply and demand.