Who is behind the whales?

We all want to get their attention just to be upvoted, but no one seems to have a clear idea on who or what they are.

Image provided by Gratisography

I still consider myself a newbie steemian, but as far as I've been able to see, most whale accounts either get their voting power from delegations or are faceless entities with close to none activity in the platform. @statsmonkey's reports constantly confirm this situation.

A good reason not to keep a big amount of SP in a personal account is that wallet information is public for anyone to see and this might bring unwanted real life attention, so this makes sense from a common sense point of view.

How far has an Steemian been able to make it just by posting and being active on steemit remains a mystery to me. Do you know any whale that started from zero and managed to stack up huge amounts of SP just by these actions?