For sure, altcoins can pump during a bear market. ICP pumped 25% over the last week. If you had bought during the last few months you would be in profit.
It's not only ICP, OP was also facing a huge pump since a few weeks ago and it's still in a big pump. I have made 4x profit since i was buying OP at the bottom price. Any altcoins in the market can be pumped easily by the whales. The trend didn't matter a lot as long as there will always be the new to bring the hype to the token. I have seen so many tokens have experienced the same thing like ICP and OP. ETC was also pumping so hard after merged announcement.
As long as a token/coin got big news, the whales will not feel hesitate to pump it lol
Whales have a huge market influence and can make a spike in the price of a certain coin. But I feel risky investing this coin, we never know what will be the next move that these whales are planning to do which is very often the cause of losses. Well, I tell you that you are too lucky to have that 4x profit in investing ICP but never think about holding them for long because those projects build with hypes and manipulated prices won't stay long as they drop drastically.