Recent pumps seems to be happening only during weekends. Taking into account that biggest exchanges, in terms of volume, are in South Korea, and that we've seen a similar trend with Steem, a few years ago, I can think of something: it might be the price increase is purely pump and dump from individual investors / groups, who are mostly synchronizing during weekends. I remember one time the SBD was around $13, and the biggest volume came from the same area, during similar bull trends. But it's just speculation, obviously.

What we all seem to agree on, is that this isn't (yet) justified by fundamentals.