Remember, this whole thing about crypto is largely decentralized, thus, there is no single authoritative body in control of the crypto market. Although there are few centralized platforms among crypto, the market is largely influenced by the efforts and influence of the users of crypto. How well sellers and buyers treat the coins on the market affect the performance of the market.
I don't think anyone actually controls the market. Cryptocurrency market is a free market for everyone.
Yes, it is a free market and that's why sometimes big whales can control the prices for a short time, not for the longer term. Since no institute is monitoring who is buying and selling so some big whales can do market manipulations for their benefits and small investors usually get trapped on in that manipulations. But in the end, markets will correct by itself and come back to the original price.
As it was started the crypto market is Decentralized, no one is in control, yes, we've heard or even read on the news,on social media link that in some way whales are behind on the spike of crypto or ALT coin as posted in the market, but it was never proven, inside market is illegal. the most possible way of either by influencing the market on the volume of investment thru the shift of investment from one coin to another but this is very Risky, often time traders do this in an open market trading.