The whales are only manipulating the short term price of BTC. Since almost all other cryptocurrencies are tethered to Bitcoin, they are also manipulated in the same way.
But whales seem to have little influence on the steady increase in BTC adoption by the market. As more and more people adopt investing in cryptocurrencies, and more applications for their use emerge, their value should continue to increase. Billions of dollars are invested in cryptocurrency mining, from individuals mining coins in their garages, to large investors building mining farms. This belief in a thriving ocean of cryptocoins lends enormous credence to its eventual dominance across the globe. Whales can pump and dump at will, but in the long run, minnows dominate the crypto ocean.