Even the combined efforts of the whole community far surpass the whales ability to truly control the market enirely. The community establish the trend and approx price, the whales try to distaught the price to the high or low so as much as possible but the trend is always the strongest measure.
Whales effected the price more when it was at a lower value. Whales used to crash and pump up more effectively then but now days its more of a community effort. But I still believe that whales influence the market more than we realize.
Oh yeah for sure when there were just 2 or 3 big players in the game they could communicate and combine efforts more easy. Whats happened since is big bitcoin holders have parted ways + we have new money in the game also. we must have 100 decent size whales these days and that is harder for them to communicate and combine efforts.