or what you really see is its lots of minnows selling and buying. but what happens on an exchange is not what happens on the blockchain
exchanges are the hoarders not whales.
what people think are whales are actually exchange cold stores
and yes they have to break their cold stores to make payments.
so when you see large amounts move. its not a whale. its an exchange breaking its cold store
those whales(non exchanges) that hold more then 100btc. are hoarding still
majority of coin movements onchain of 100+ are exchanges simply re-organising their coldstores
with 10-100K Bitcoins have reduced their holdings by 157,545 BTC.
in short.. exchanges have broke their 10k+ coldstores and paid out into smaller 'warm' wallets of <1k coin to then pay out to users. or reaccumilate later back into >1k+ cold stores later