I don't believe in whales. I have met a lot of people with real fortunes in crypto in the last 8 years. None of them do the stuff that whale watchers think they do. Often I see posts about a whale crashing the market by risking their coins. That is not a sensible thing to do. It is possible to perhaps cause a temporary dip in the market that allows you to buy back your coin and a little more. However that has a HUGE risk that makes it a fools game. Nobody I know with millions is a fool like that.
To be successful at trading rule one is to not pay attention to bullshit and rumors. Money is mathematical, not emotional. All this whale talk is about FOMO and a desire to own a bunch of stuff. I'm convinced that my edge in the market is that I don't care about money or getting rich. In crypto and other markets the money sticks to you once you don't care. Kinda like how once you have a girlfriend it seems so easy to get a girlfriend. Having one means you don't worry about it.
Even people with "real fortunes" in crypto liquidate or need to exit positions. There are real whales/institutional investors and there are many ways to trade large positions that can manipulate prices or cause one of our fractured crypto markets to crash temporarily. For example, when Ethereum dropped from $319 to $0.10 cents in GDAX on JUN 22, 2017, when a "whale" performed a multi-million dollar market-sell. That's an atypical event, but depending on the exchange you can commonly view whales placing iceberg orders and using imbalancing strategies to game the market.