the question you may now be asking is, how do you recognise when these whales are doing this tactic, well:
when you see a stepping stone effect on the market history of stability then temp volatility, and then stability again
/\
| \/\/\/\/
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/its due to
controlled price within limits using wallswalls removed walls set at new level
at first i was skeptical about this whole issue of whale and walls but from your explanation i can understand the reason why sometimes we have a sudden surge in bitcoin price. this shows that it is not just all about demand and supply but an additional force by the whale implementing a wall strategy that sets a new level from the previous. from the image above i can see how bitcoin was stagnant at the level of $94k but the massive buy of the whale has created a wall that led to bitcoin surge to nearly $98k and after the wall removed it set a new level in-between $94k and $98k at around $96k. i understand better now.
from my observations the green section is where a whale releases its wall (example removes the $95k wall and puts it at $98k) it then lets other investors just go mad on a buying spree without the $95k wall holding things down.
and then when the buy minnows eat up all the orders from other sell minnows from $95k to $98k. it then puts a bottom support wall in at $96k to stop it going down too much and lock minnows into buying/selling at $96k-$98k
you can usually spot the different levels they want to step stone the market at different resistance levels if you look at the right market order books
5 days ago

When Bitcoin dropped to 76k, those who sold believed it would fall even further. It's easy to talk in hindsight after something has happened. Maybe Bitcoin would've gone lower, in that case those sellers would've been seen as making the right call. That outcome was a very real possibility. But it didn't happen, Bitcoin climbed back above 100k. In situations like this, I prefer holding steady over making frequent trades.
After all, not selling doesn't lead to much regret, but selling and then watching it go up hurts a lot more. That's why we see a lot of FOMO buy.
what you actually find is that its not the normal investors 'selling out' to just buy in lower. its not normal people the majority of the time panic selling..
its again alot of whales manipulating things
what they do is they use arbitrage, for instance the btc and eth markets
[BTC->USD] -> [USD->ETH] -> [ETH->BTC]
by doing this they dont have to wait hours or days hoping for lower prices to buy back in
instead whales quick arbitrage(in milliseconds) to cycle/rinse the 3 pairs, to get back to holding bitcoin again without causing much of a loss of their holdings.
they repeat this many times. causing alot of [BTC->USD] sell orders to be shown which cause the price to lower without them losing control of BTC holdings
in short they can repeat this trick hundreds of times with the same lump of coin, making it look like alot of volume from alot of users, when its actually just a few users with bots rinsing the same coin continuously
if it was an individual just selling to just exit with a hoard of fiat.. or to wait holding said hoard of fiat for a lower price to buy again, you would see a delay in the other pairs and other exchanges of same pairs reacting.. but because all other arbitrage path markets move simultaneously shows the value moving in arbitrage circles, not held as fiat waiting