We have that mindset that the market is manipulated and there were several articles that came out for it to report but we don't know what exactly is happening during the dumps. We have a certain idea that there's a massive selling that occurs.
I concur about your idea before the pump, there should be a sort of correction for the whales to accumulate. Perhaps, they really are the ones that's pulling the price down so that they can easily sell, accumulate and repeat.
I supported what you said but the reason why some people believed the market to be manipulated is because of the volatility in nature of crypto market. Meanwhile, there's always a reason behind every trend posed by the market and current trend was slightly market correction which usually occur every Q4 of the year which is not block halving year. However, we have a situation where the whales are the one behind the market status.
Yep, it's always the whales that has it behind the market but about the manipulation we don't really have an idea about the actual scene. I used to believe that it's been manipulated but no proof for that and just all the reports that it is.
In my opinion now market is manipulated in proportion of 65%, by whales, by bad news, by interest groups, and sometimes by people from governments even if not directly.
The bad news do really pull the prices down but when we see some a bit of good news, we don't see the opposite of it.