I think its mean for Endorsing coin (shilling the project) in the Youtube by a big Youtuber will cost about 30k usd, i bet only whales who use this tools to pump their coins since its a big money.
It's not the whale but it mostly coming from the project team. XRP already paid lots of shillers to shill its project and it goes down after SEC's case with it. The shillers are getting paid to promote the project.
IO don't believe the whales were using this because i rarely seen the whales were ordering the shill to create shilling contents.
The whales can pump it anytime and it doesn't require the shillers.