If you was one of those Whales, you gonna just do like them or more. dont be unreallistic!
like youu dont have the money and knowledge of Whales, invest on projects with big % winning overall in lapse time of weeks, and hold your coins for weeks or months before selling.
if you are a weak hand and like daily trading, sure you gonna hate them, but if you buy and hold for weeks and months, you gonna love them.
I'm just explaining how the market works. For example right now Whales are stabilizing the XRP price around .30c. They forced it down on ETH rise before yesterday and people panic sold thinking it was headed for rock bottom then they raised it back up making easy money. That panic strategy works on stagnant coins. Then yesterday they were waiting on news to skyrocket it but no news came. The second news comes they will shoot it to the stars then as fomo hits they will sell and dump some then ping pong it margin trading and stabilize it at a higher value. XRP will hit .50C next time good news comes but the issue is they can't get any real legit news to get the public going. Public interest is actually declining in XRP. If Whales started to steadily decline XRP value it would drop so fast because public sentiment is turning negative towards it, people would sell quickly but they're maintaining it. It is in their control. Long term if a coin has positive public sentiment and stays fresh they will keep playing their game while raising the coin value in the long-run you're right. Only when a coin reaches a certain point do Whales lose their ability to negatively impact a coin. For example BitCoin unless something crazy happens will never drop too low because public has bought in so much that people will buy it up. Majority of alts can easily be influenced to crash by Whales though.
I actually day trade and have gotten such a good feel for how they operate that I'm able to profit very well. The safest thing to do is buy and hold good coins as you said though. In my book that is only BTC/ETH. I love putting money in sleepers with good potential though that I feel Whales have put an interest in. If Whales have put an interest in the alt coin it will rise, then if it has real potential you keep it or if it does not there are data signs that reveal when the dump is coming and you cash out before then. A lot of times now though the public gets behind it and eats up the Whales dump then the coin keeps walking like a chicken with no head. The investors don't realize they just bought a bunch of sand. The Whales sell some and use the rest to see how much longer they can keep it going before people realize it's a shitcoin. It's a ticking time bomb at that point because there will come a time when the public realize it's crap and they themselves do a massive dump. I'm still waiting to see one of those happen.