Hard times and a shitty economy. Wages and earnings and lower and stretch far less forcing some people to dip into their savings and investments just to survive get the bills paid and food in their families belly perhaps in many cases. In other cases people have lost faith or it’s just FUD

There are 2 reasons as to why.
1. These small scale holders that you are saying are probably those newbie investors that are selling their Bitcoin holdings because of the negative news that they saw online, and since they're newbies, they are sometimes panicking therefore, making bad decisions such as selling their tokens at a loss.
2. These small scale holders don't only sell because they panicked. They are selling because they want to take profits. Nothing more.

I just don't like the thinking where you are generalizing us small scale holders that we are panicking most of the time while those who have lots of BTC holding already are continuing to accumulate even more. At the end of the day, we have different strategies, and the strategy of those whales are to continue to accumulate until it reach a certain point where they need to sell their Bitcoins. As for us small scale holders, yes there are some who are panic selling, but can we just think at least for once that we are selling because we are taking profits and not panic selling?

In my opinion maybe they invest more than they can afford to lose, so they panic and decide to sell bitcoins. Maybe they have less idea about Bitcoin, maybe they don't trust Bitcoin. Those who believe Bitcoin is trustworthy never panic. But not all small investors panic. Those who invest small amounts in the DCA method do not panic when the market goes down but have a long-term plan. Actually investing in Bitcoin should have a long term plan. If you cannot hold bitcoins for the long term, then investing in bitcoins is not for you.