That's certainly true, mate. Whales are the ones who mostly manipulate the crypto market. They always buy low and sell high no matter the circumstances. Whenever there are negative news about crypto and Blockchain in general, they always resort to shorting crypto at exchanges for their own benefit. Whales easily buy cheap coins from frustrated investors (mostly noobs) to sell later at a higher profit. When the time is right, they'll pump the price of Bitcoin to the roof just like it happened way back in 2017.
For that to be true, whales need to coordinate their actions, and this sounds quite unlikely to me. Imagine one whale trying to crash the market, but then other whales immediately buy all the coins that the first whale dumped and even more - now he lost a lot of money with his attempt at manipulation. Or consider this scenario - a whale tries to start a pump by making big purchase, and the "newbies" continue the pump, and now it's time for the whale to take profit by dumping, but another whale proves to be faster and takes the profit instead - the result the same as in the first example - a whale loses a lot of money.
Things like that happened in the past, remember the legendary bearwhale story?