You're right about whales but i don't see any pump and dumps happening recently. There have been many fud in the news and social media about how many countries are banning or regulating exchanges. And then there's the high fees with slow transaction speed. We really.can't expect btc to breakout with these issues lingering
We have been seeing a lot of improvement since then with regards to the TX fees of bitcoin. Also, lightning network is now on "testing phase" so we will expect for these TX fees to go down as well.