You are right, whales must have a community to communicate with each other to manipulate the market. We as small investors can only follow market trends. because we can't fight whales.
And this is not only in crypto, but almost happens in all trades.
After ehales paved the way, we as small fish can follow it, an interesting analogy because this is the reality that happens.
However, the market is dominated by the mighty capital holders or the most powerful persons in the economy. That is, prices can be formed due to the accumulation or distribution that they do and this means that the small investor has no choice but to go with the flow that has been created. This is not only peculiar to the crypto world but a common situation in many trades where the side with the biggest cash luggage has the upper hand. However, merely following such patterns remains one of the ways of being able to stay afloat in such environments and capitalise on what is available within conditions of change in prices.
Actually, the Bitcoin market has large number of traders/investors with huge capital that control prices at their own advantage, even Whales are another group of investors that manipulate the market prices too, and it is unfortunate that smaller traders/investors continue to suffer the impact of the market dumps over times.
Now, besides these large capital traders/investors and whales control of the market prices, there are other reasons why the prices increases or decrease in price at intervals, for instance, the demands, supply, speculations, hypes, and the market circle contributes to the ups and downs price movements at regular intervals.