What if all this is the miners themselves? Minting in tiptop a ready for an upcoming wash trade in a bull run
Discussion
Minting inscriptions *
Possible but unlikely. Miners cannot coordinate on this level. Pools don't control miners and still need to issue competitive payouts which can easily be audited from the produced blocks.
There are tons of independent miners, getting them onboard with something like this in secrecy does not sound realistic.