In my opinion the whales are killing it. They do feed the big curation accounts. And those only upvote the same authors over and over again. And these authors do create an incredible selling wall.
I'm feeling the same way, this switch to curation groups (along with the HBD Yield which puts massive sell pressure on the Hive Price) have been deadly for the Hive price with an overall decline as a result. There is just zero incentive for people to hold Hive Power while most of the ones who get curated over and over again just dump systematically.
The problem with the Downvote whale is that he has a clear case of Narcissism disorder, being friendly to some but then abusing his power to bully others.