Banks are earning big profit from our deposits, they earn bigger than the interest that we get from our deposit because they put a bigger interest rate through thier borrower's or lenders, i think bank is not too far from big whales in crypto they buy or collect coins in dip and they sell in bull and they earn bigger from the holders that sell at loss they are almost the same or what? What dou you think?
Whales aren't financial institutions but they're like just us that are individual players on this market. While the banks are financial institutions and they've got a lot of source aside from the deposits that they get from their customers for which will be used for loaning.
As the whales, we don't really know what they do in real life. They could also be the banks, another financial institution but we'll never know who they really are.
From what we've known, they're just the typical big investors that do manipulate and influence the market and what they do isn't different from what we do of buying low and selling high.