I think that is possible. It is a coin where whales might so interest, they will first accumulate slowly at low prices and then inflate to high levels. There are lot of beginner type users involved with pi coins who do not believe in the coin , they will sell at whatever good profit they see. But whales have all the patience to absorb the coins first and then slowly increase the price to $10 or more.
Okay, it's understandable that whales can buy coins at a low price from those who sell early, but what do you mean by them inflating the price or increasing the price to $10 or more after buying a lot of coins? The price of a coin can only go up if there is high demand for it in the market, and whales might be able to manipulate the price, but they can't make the price go up that much to get some profit. For whales, it's easier to manipulate the price by dropping it because they can easily buy a lot of coins and then create large sell orders so that other sellers keep lowering their selling prices.
That being said, even though PI has a pretty good market cap at the moment and is currently at the 11th position based on its market cap, it also has a good trading volume, but we can't forget that the circulating supply is very low, which is 7.1B while the total supply of the coin is 100B. So, we should expect periodic unlocking of the remaining supply, which means there will be more coins in the market, and that will affect the price in the long run.