The current situation of exchange monopoly, Wall Street playing people for suckers, and retail investors' despair.

To be honest, the Black Swan Event of 1011 has made me, a originally optimistic industry observer, feel a sense of despair.

Originally, I understood the current "Three Kingdoms Kill" situation in the crypto industry, thinking that the immortals were fighting and retail investors could benefit a bit. However, after experiencing this bloodbath and peeling back the layers to uncover its underlying logic, I found that it was not the case.

In simple terms, it was originally thought that the tech side was innovating, the exchanges were focusing on traffic, and Wall Street was allocating funds, with the three parties playing their own games. As retail investors, we just need to seize the opportunity, ride the wave during technological innovations, jump on the hotspots when they arise, and when the funds come in, we can always get a little share of the pie.

However, after experiencing the massacre of 1011, I suddenly realized that these three parties may not be competing in an orderly manner at all, but rather are harvesting all the liquidity in the end?

First Force: Exchange Monopoly Flow, the vampires that hold traffic and liquidity pools.

To be honest, I used to think that exchanges just wanted to create large platforms, increase traffic, build a vast ecosystem, and make money from shoveling. However, the incident with USDe being liquidated in a chain reaction due to cross-margining exposed the helplessness of retail investors under the rules defined by the exchange platforms. The leverage levels and opaque risk control capabilities that platforms enhance to improve product service experiences are actually traps for retail investors.

Various rebate activities, Alpha, MEME launchpads, various financial circular loans, and high-leverage contract gameplay are emerging one after another. It seems to provide retail investors with many opportunities to make money, but once the exchange can't handle the risks of on-chain DeFi cascading liquidations, retail investors will also suffer along with it. Life, huh.

What is chilling to think about is that the top 10 exchanges had a trading volume of $21.6 trillion in Q2, yet the overall market liquidity is still declining. Where has the money gone? Aside from transaction fees, there are various liquidations. Who exactly has drained the liquidity?

The Second Force: Wall Street Capital, Entering the Market Under the Guise of Compliance to Claim Territory

I was really looking forward to Wall Street coming in, thinking that institutional funds could bring greater stability to the market, as institutions are long-term players and can inject additional liquidity into the market. We could then sit back and enjoy the industry dividends from the integration of Crypto and TradFi.

However, before this sharp decline, there were reports of whales accurately shorting for profit, with several wallets suspected to be Wall Street structures opening huge short positions before the crash, making hundreds of millions in profit. There are many similar reports that read like insider information, but occurring at such a moment of panic makes one wonder why institutions always seem to have the advantage of "front running" before a Black Swan Event?

What are these TradFi institutions actually doing, under the guise of compliance and bringing in funds? Bundling the DeFi ecosystem with stablecoin public chains, controlling the flow of funds through ETF channels, and gradually encroaching on the market's discourse power with various financial instruments? On the surface, they claim it's for the industry's development, but in reality? There are too many conspiracy theories about the Trump family's profit-making to elaborate on.

Third Force: Tech Natives + Retail Developers, caught in the crossfire.

I think this is where most retail investors and developers, the so-called builders, are truly desperate. Since last year, it has been said that many altcoins have been knocked down, but this time they have directly plunged to zero, forcing people to see the reality that the liquidity of many altcoins has nearly dried up.

The key is that there is a pile of infra technical debt, the application implementation is below expectations, and developers are苦哈哈地 build, but what is the result? The market simply does not buy it.

So, I can't see how the altcoin market will rise again, nor can I understand how these altcoin projects plan to seize liquidity from exchanges, or how they will compete with Wall Street institutions in terms of driving up prices? If the market is not buying the narrative of storytelling, and if the market is left with so-called MEME gambling, this would mean a decisive clearing and reshuffling for the altcoin market, with developers fleeing and the structure of industry participants being reshuffled. Is the market destined to return to nothingness? Sigh, it's too difficult!

So.....

Too much talk only brings tears. If the current situation of the crypto industry continues with exchanges monopolizing profits, Wall Street making precise harvests, and retail technical traders being double-killed, it will undoubtedly be a catastrophic disaster for the past cyclical nature of Crypto.

In the long run, the market only leaves behind a few short-term winners and all long-term losers.