Since most of the cryptocurrency traders and investors are in Binance
mistake #1 is drastically exaggerating binance's importance. it's an altcoin exchange with zero fiat channels. "most crypto traders and investors" are definitely not holding funds on binance.
And with recent hack, it seem that the hacker gained access to many users accounts using API of users affected by the breach, don't you think that the market manipulation come from there ?
Because the price change by up to 500$ in a period of one day or less.
binance was lagging behind the other exchanges. they weren't driving this rally.
the price was being driven up much higher/faster on bitstamp, coinbase, and kraken primarily. the USDT market was lagging behind (same as bitfinex) and so was binance's USDC market. this was legit fomo on real fiat exchanges driving the market. it doesn't look like binance had a thing to do with it.