*shrug* Hodlers gonna hodl. So long as the coin isn't needed for life expenses, it doesn't really matter how long it takes the hodl to fodl; it's in a (mental) vault. Traders are short-term and I assume they more-or-less balance each other out, where their influence is really more in creating stability than manipulating any long-term trends (unless there's a significant number with large stakes about to be burned).
Came here to write a long essay on how OP suffers from a misunderstanding of what 'trading' vs. 'holding' does, but looks like you already answered it better than I could have.
Here's my own version of a similar argument anyway:
Traders don't fundamentally change anything. They add a bit of volatility at the beginning of a trend (momentum following), they take a bit of it away at the other end (mean reversion), and first and foremost, they add a modicum of second-level predictability to the market by preying on the first-level predictability of the 'purely intuitive' market participants.
None of that changes the larger fundamental question every market faces: is buying pressure dominating, or selling pressure?
For the past year, it was the latter, and that can't be the fault of traders - they, like anyone else, can only sell a coin they own once before buying it back again.
