If ethereum falles 35% or 100% more there are still some people who buy it because they trust in Ethereum future , so As long as there are demands for the Ethereum market , It won't die , And I don't think ethereum whales would like to see its death because they are whales!
We are in a bear market, so everyone is affected including Ethereum. I'm sure Ethereum whales are very happy buying tons of it because the price is very cheap and if ever if the price goes down to $50-$25 casual investors will see that as a perfect time to buy and became a bagholder themselves. Definitely there will be demands, remember that every token project is based on Ethereum's ERC-20 technology, so definitely there's no shortage of demand, its that buyers are being outnumbered by sellers.
The problem with ETH is that a lot of the demand is cyclical. Most of it comes from ICOs rather than transaction fees, dapps etc. These ICOs raise huge amounts of ETH but then at some point they need to sell it. When the ETH price looks precarious you'll see them all start dumping so they can fund development and it leads to a downward spiral. The same is true for BTC but not quite to the same extent.