IMO market manipulation is part of trading, but only big players are able to perform such operations.
I observed one of those last year and reported here <btcusd / how a manipulation works>
If you look at btcusdlongs you can see currently there is an unprecedented desire for btcusd longs in Bitfinex, this extra ordinary longs at this level of btc price imply that there are many whales betting on long side, but some thing is fishy when considering the sentiment, SPX and other economic metrics etc. i.e. market is not that hot that this level of longs (all time high of longs) show. Probably it is a false signal by whales as their true estimate is down direction and are managing to dump at this station, maybe after some false breakouts or immediately.
last year July, at same price the opposite signal in short side fired by btcusdshorts, pretending the market is crashing while it reversed , that idea link is below, if you want to learn more.