Of course it's manipulated, the market is literally unregulated which means everyone trade on equal conditions, always. The key difference is that wall street or drug cartels for that matter doesn't have any advantage at all.

When they get rekt they get rekt, and nobody would bail them out. Neither could they use inflation because there will only ever be 21,000,000 coins and mining requires proof of work.

Tax... forget it, your keys = your coins, you could easily hide your stash and pretend to be poor even if you're a millionaire and there's no way for the government to find it.

Of course it's manipulated, the market is literally unregulated which means everyone trade on equal conditions, always. The key difference is that wall street or drug cartels for that matter doesn't have any advantage at all.