Bitcoin has been declared dead many times:

https://bitcoindeaths.com/

It just keeps on existing.

I don't think the BTC market is worth playing unless you are good at knowing how the whales (who control it in its entirety) operate.

Everyone already knows BTC will be back at 110 in a few months. It might dip to 30 first, who the hell knows.

The Bitcoin ecosystem, folks looking at it as an investment / get rich pathway, all the scam / poorly run companies, straight up crime ... really seems to fly in the face of the whitepaper and presumed ethos.

Russia-Ukraine war is being wound down and Russian sanctions will be lifted probably in the next 1-2 months. Crypto is the financial tissue that connects sanctioned entities to non-sanctioned Western banks. What you are seeing is Russians and other sanctioned entities dumping their coins since they won't be needed soon.

Bitcoin goes up, bitcoin goes down, you can't explain that.

Seriously though, bitcoin has always been highly volatile, is this really a story?

It's a speculative instrument useful for enabling criminal activity and not much else.