Is it possible that whales are pumping the price right now to keep it high and they will sell at some point?
It's not whales. Whales can't pump the price up. It's the HODLers. If everybody just HODLed the price would go to infinity.
if everyone holds then price stays stable!
you have to buy bitcoin for the price to go up and you have to sell it for it to come down. and in the past years people have been buying more and more bitcoin, and although many of them are just holders but many more are new people with new money coming in to buy more bitcoin.