Whales can speculate if they form some kind of alliance but the real reason why prices are moving up or down is the information investors receive.
for example:
I just read that China activated it great firewall and Chinese IP addresses will not longer be able to access cryptocurrency websites such as bittrex coinbase bitfinex etc.
This surely hit and other related news as well.
It is quite reasonable to suspect governments and financial institutions that they are also manipulating with prices by distributing powerful announcements to drive the prices down or up depending on the vector of the news.
What if BTC price will be pushed down to 5K or 3K and then JP Morgan will say that we have concluded that there are no reasons to ban BTC any more and we will invest 5 Billion in it.?