Oh yes, of course. “The price isn’t manipulated. It’s the l…

Oh yes, of course. “The price isn’t manipulated. It’s the literal price at the literal time.”
Brilliant. By that logic, no market in history has ever been manipulated, because every manipulated price was also the price at the time.
This is the sort of insight one expects from someone who thinks a thermometer causes the weather.
Prices can be real and manipulated. That is why regulated exchanges have surveillance, disclosure rules, short-selling controls, market-maker obligations, wash-trade rules, spoofing enforcement, circuit breakers, margin rules, settlement controls, and audit trails.
NASDAQ and the NYSE do not have those systems because everyone involved is bored. They have them because markets without controls are easily gamed.
Crypto bucket shops, offshore exchanges, naked shorts, synthetic liquidity, wash volume, coordinated releases, and opaque custody structures create exactly the environment where price discovery becomes theatre.
So yes, it is the literal price.
That does not mean it is an honest price.