You are not incorrect.
The whole bitcoin to $20k last year was a bunch of manipulation by some traders getting into the market.
And the reason it didn't stay up there was a bunch of manipulation keeping people from getting onto exchanges and putting their dollars into cryptos.
Further, think about this. The price is not really about the market cap, it is about how much is for sale now, and how much demand there is now. People in the market trading are a small proportion of the actual tokens in wallets.
But, all of this trading is from 1-2% of the earth's population. And now, it looks like we will go to 13% over the next two years. So, that higher lows will get higher faster/steeper.