Whales don't matter. One of the fundamental aspects of bitcoin is that you can't vote, can't provide network security by staking, can't collude, and wether you have 1000 BTC, or 0 BTC, you have the same amount of influence within the protocol. What whales will ultimately have to decide is 1) wether they distribute their coins to others in order to capture economic expansion (which benefits those who hold the coins next), or 2) if they hodl their coins, benefitting everyone hodling coins. The time preference incentives are not something we've ever seen. That's a question I ask every bitcoin critic: what incentives does fiat produce, and what incentives does bitcoin produce?