It was not a single whale. It had all the hallmarks of bubble like tulip mania or Internet stocks in 1999.
I for one am sure people are being paid to hype up or report on BTC so that the people paying for those "news" reports can profit from the increased price.
This position being facilitated either by direct action or, more frequently, by enthusiastic prompting from a "blockchain consultant" acquaintance who offered to walk them through setting up a wallet (or even a miner / mining contract) and show them how to use it. You know, "just to see how it works."
Now that their curiosity has been elevated to, as Bitcoiners love to quip, actual "skin in the game" (both in terms of time/material investment and reputational commitment), they are biased to repeat the pro-bitcoin messaging points they've been spoonfed by what they believe to be a helpful, fashionably libertarian insider geek contact, but is in effect merely this generation's reboot of the garden variety penny stock shill.
It's really a textbook study in how to manipulate markets -- and yes, it was probably one entity doing it. Now who that entity is may be a matter of speculation, but it's likely bitfinex/tether, which are really the same company run by the same people.