"The Centralized Bitcoin exchanges seem to coordinate their prices across continental divides. "
Its called ARBITRAGE. Has the author of this article never heard of it?
Its also called: traders watching the price on all exchanges and using that to make decisions.
In general, when someone says: "X is manipulated", you should read that as "I have lost money because I don't know what I am doing, and need something to blame other than myself". The thought is: "I SHOULD have made money, but some evil sinister force is manipulating the market so that I don't!"
All the things that people like to call "manipulation" are just standard market forces.