My theory is, everyone's expecting it to crash. So therefore it's more likely to do the opposite. Not much of a theory, but it seems to have been historically true.

If the market is efficient, the collective expectations is what gives the price at a given moment. It is what people are will ing to pay for it and what people are willing to sell for.

That's how a crash happens isn't it? It's not driven by any wider economic reality beyond the conviction of "investors". If the investors can be convinced that it's crashing then it crashes. That certainly appears to be how manipulative exploitation of short positions occurs.

I think your sample is too small. Old-world finance looks at the charts and expects a crash, but everyone who actually holds BTC seems to have a target price of $1M