Manipulation is far fetched. Someone would need to be dumping them. Purposely to grt everyone to sell. But most of the steem is locked up in steem power, so the remaining steem is being dumped at a huge discount. If steemitinc is selling it to finance things, that could be why. 2million dollars worth of steem is 4million steem that's being liquidated.

I'm really not sure how much theyve sold at discounted prices, but I'm sure it's a lot!