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a large holder might iceberg large sells at resistance, but whether or not a top actually forms there is really just up to the market. plenty of whales have been slaughtered mercilessly by this market, especially in the older days. having a bunch of coins doesn't mean whales knows shit about trading. for some reason, people just assume these people are profitable and remain whales. they aren't and don't. they're not much different than the 80% of traders that lose money.
It has been always a question for me, how many of early adopters still hold their thousands of coins? In 2013 some people were saying that most of them sold everything when Bitcoin was around $100. But then, due to high demand on the part of regular people, Bitcoin hit $1,000+ in December 2013 and the subsequent falling could only be explained by dumping big amounts by whales, because regular people couldn't lose their interest in Bitcoin at once. Then December 2017 happened when again because of the high demand from new adopters the price skyrocketed to $20k, and we all know what happened next. Again, I don't think those newcomers who were buying at $10k-$15k started selling their coins all of a sudden. Most likely it were the whales this time too.
And today when we are witnessing that the price is more or less stabilized, can it be the sign that most of them whales indeed sold their coins earlier and that's why they can't manipulate the market no more? If that is the case then in the future the price will depend solely on the demand and supply, and since the demand will inevitably rise the price will rise as well.