Shorters have a lot of money for capital so they will definitely be able to make a lot of money, and if that's effective way to make money, why change it into something that is far inferior. Leveraging is a risky way to trade which could spell demise to your whole capital if you made a wrong decision. There's a lot of money you can make in trading but if you are starting from scratch, it's difficult to say that there's a lot of money in there.
Shorters do not always have a ton of money, that is the idea of what wall street did to reddit and look where we are right now, shorters there ended up losing a ton of money in return. If the price wants to go up, then it will go up, all depends on the market wanting it to make it go up.
I have seen this coin go from under 4k to over 60k in a year, that is nearly 18x increase, that is not normal and people were doubting it all the way, from 10k to 20k to 30k to all the way to ATH price people doubted bitcoin to go up even more, and yet it did. So, if there is a market want for a higher price and we believe in it and start to bulk buy it all together again? That means the price will definitely go up, add in some famous people and big corporations going into bitcoin and you have yourself a new ATH on bitcoin price without caring about what shorters think or want.