I think this is a question of driving the price as high as possible before the australia auction, no the halving or new paradigm or any of that, BTC Deep pockets need to get these bidders to pay as high a price as possible for 24,000 bitcoins so they can't control the price as well as the whale consortium.
I agree BTC Markets are highly controlled and manipulated. This is why people recommend only the blockchain technology vs using bitcoins as a store of value.
My prediction is up until June 20/21 then a massive dump after that. Let's see.