You're right.
I too was rather curious about what was happening because at that time I knew SBD was pegged but didn't know it was only from the bottom. That said, how come it was 0,85 at some points throughout 2017? Odd, isn't it?
The thing is, the price of SBD was around $2 USD in May 2017 and there really was not much fuss about it back then. We will see what happens. If the manipulators cashed out their initial investment already, why would they not do it again? It's not like they needed too many people, anyway.
They probably have a good understanding of the platform as well. All they need afterwards is set up some sort of voting-bot and they are literally printing free money on top of printing free money.