While whales cannot completely control the price of bitcoin they can exercise some indirect control of it, so it is natural they are not going to let the market to skyrocket when it is not on their best interest to do so, and for evidence of this just look at what the price is doing now, many retail traders were speculating that bitcoin could go up in price significantly during this month, and instead we are seeing the opposite, and there is a strong chance this is happening because the whales are manipulating the price so this growth does not happen now.
The bitcoin market is still a manipulative market rather than a market based on supply and demand. I think the halving is just one of the most relevant reasons for sharks to freely manipulate the market, and people believe that the price increase is due to the increasing demand for bitcoin.
If you pay attention, you will see that bitcoin always moves against people's thoughts. When we all believe bitcoin will continue to rise to 30k, bitcoin will do the opposite. It makes me feel like the sharks are manipulating our psyche to their advantage.
There is little doubt this is the case, however it is not as if this is the only market in which this happens, since all markets experiment some level of manipulation whether we like it or not, for this reason we need to try to not react without thinking to the movements of the market, as in that case we will do exactly what the whales want, which most of the time it runs contrary to what we want and expect out of this market.