it might've started out with nerds and gamers, but once it became a speculative pool, the big boy financial institutions and central banks bought the lion share of the market and manipulated and adjusted accordingly. This is a from a 2018 article
>According to public records of Nordnet trading logs, the two associated firms JP Morgan Securities Ltd., and Morgan Stanley bought roughly 3M euro worth of XBT note shares. Interestingly after the recent regulatory crackdown in China, and the statements from JP Morgan’s senior executive Jamie Dimon talking trash about bitcoin, his firm bought the dip on September 15. In fact, out of all the companies on the list, like Goldman Sachs and Barclays, the JP Morgan team of buyers purchased the most XBT notes.
https://news.bitcoin.com/after-the-boss-calls-bitcoin-a-fraud-jp-morgan-buys-the-dip/
XBT is Bitcoin if you're unaware. This is what we found out in 2018, who knows how much they were buying before that, and since. It was the biggest speculative bubble since the dotcoms. The big boys were the ones who shot it up to the moon, bought the biggest pie, and now are cashing out. The little man will be the one left holding the bag.