Let us say whales might sell but they cannot dump it to a number which is too low for people to panic again.
It depends on where their stops are located. Most of the people aren't selling manually but do it through triggered stops.
I think that it's safe to say that when we hit $8999 the price will experience a fast decline towards $8500, or even lower if there isn't enough liquidity on the buy side of the order book. The few noobie noobs that do end up selling manually have very likely done so already, which if you look back, they have done a good job looking at where the price is right now.
I remember people (mainly hodlers) making fun of those who panic sold around $10,000 back in 2018. They would regret having sold with how the bull run would push the price back to $20,000 before the end of the year. We all know what happened after that.