In that regard, the alleged manipulators might have to change sides when the BTC price starts moving against them in order to attempt to recuperate their losses in the opposite direction of their original intended manipulation, so would those kinds of behaviors and dynamics be fairly characterized as manipulation or just reasonable and expected dynamics of a relatively small free market?
Yes, they would have to, if these manipulators actually exist.
At least the appeal - or eventuality - that such exist and do successfully more or less willingly or unwillingly, significantly manipulate prices, the trust into bitcoin as an investment would likely decrease, mostly by (future) retail customers.
I am not sure whether we are arguing about semantics or merely just some amount of variation in regards to how we speculate about the manipulation going on or the possible impact of such purported manipulation.
There might be some BTC/market/price dynamics that we actually agree upon, and then there would be questions regarding how we might characterize those dynamics, and their effects on either the market or perceptions of the market.
Shouldn't we already agree that there are going to be whale players who are going to want to manipulate bitcoin down as much as they can and for as long as they can, and they are going to use actual physical manipulations such as dumping coins, and if they can they are going to attempt to engage in dirty tactics such as fractional reserves and whatever they can to time their dumpenings and they are going to use information or misinformation campaigns in order to attempt to create negative impressions about bitcoin, but in the end, how far and for how long are they going to be able to be successful in keeping the BTC price down.
Those fucks tried and tried and tried to keep BTC prices below $500, but they lost control. Same is true at other BTC price points, so what makes you believe that they are going to be any more successful this time? Are they going to be able to get BTC prices to go below $3,122? The odds seem quite highly against them, so who the fuck cares if they are able to drag out this particular correction for months and months and months, because in the end, they are going to have to give in and allow or chase BTC's price up.
I have no doubts that there are BIG ASS players who can keep BTC's price down further and for longer than reasonable or rational, but they are also ONLY likely to be able to achieve their objectives for so long, and that is likely what happened in late 2015 when they could no longer keep BTC's price down. Same could happen this time. If they can get BTC's price to go below $3,122 then there are going to be a lot of jaded folks, but what the fuck are HODLers like us going to do at those price points? Hopefully we are buying rather than selling, but anyhow, let them manipulate and try to get the price to go down. That is what we expect them to attempt to do, but BTC prices are still way the fuck higher than they were a few years ago, and that is surely not because whale manipulators wanted BTC's prices to be in these current $8k-ish territories. If it was up to them, we would still be below $500.
TLDR (for Hueristic) 
, these bearwhale fucktwats, whether they are rich peeps, financial institutions, government entities or some combination can ONLY manipulate BTC prices and public sentiment so much, which in the end, I have a hard time conceding that manipulation is really the right descriptive word choice.
