It's obviously going up due to the self fulfilling prophecy of the halving it does it every single time because people with money know they can keep this pattern going and pump it after the halving.
They will keep doing this until the price gets to high to pump any longer.
Or it's just organic supply and demand. How could we tell the difference? That's the problem with conspiracy theories about whales. They can't be proven one way or the other.
I am skeptical of Tether and websites like bitmex having a lot of control over the price.
I am skeptical Bitmex has as much control over the price as people think. As for Tether, they and Bitfinex represent a massive chunk of the crypto economy in terms of volume and liquidity. Those will always be determining factors for price discovery.