Why are users with huge steempowers called whales on steemit?

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Individual accounts with large holdings are known as whales on Steem but the term equally applies throughout the crypto markets. 

My guess is that the term was brought across from poker where a "whale" is a very rich player at the table, often with a very large stack of poker chips.  

In poker the term also has the connotation of being a loose player, one from which it is easy to win money. The term probably derives from the poker term "fish" which is used to mean a bad player who is often "fishing" for hands (trying to randomly hook a win rather than being patient) or being involved in "fishy" play. So a whale is a very large fish (even though this isn't biologically accurate). The negative connotation from poker does not apply in crypto. 

However there is a further similarity in that large early crypto holders were typically individuals, like poker players, whereas large asset holders in other investment classes are typically companies. So the term may have been used due to individual nature of large holders of crypto bringing a similarity to their counterparts in the poker world.