In the past year, the price of Bitcoin has repeatedly refreshed the ceiling, and institutional money pours into it like water that opens the floodgates. Many people are finally relieved - you see, the mainstream world has finally recognized it.

But reality quickly slapped this sense of security. When massive funds flock to Bitcoin spot ETFs, piling up more than 136 million BTC holdings and nearly $170 billion in management, what about the Bitcoin in the hands of most ordinary holders, except for those who have a keen sense of smell? Either lie in a cold wallet and eat ashes, or hang in an exchange account in a daze. Just like a gold bar locked in a safe, it can do almost nothing else except to make a beta income by staring at the price rises and falls.

What about the institution? People use various derivatives tools to squeeze out the value of every fluctuation. Retail investors are stuck in a dilemma: either let their assets completely sleep in their wallets and lose huge opportunity costs; or throw it into centralized platform hosting, risking not knowing when it will be thunderous. The platform crashes that have broken out one after another in recent years have scared people enough.

What's even worse is that this gap is becoming a solidified rule of the game. The data is there: big new money is indeed entering the market, but this time it is different from before, they no longer flow to the altcoin market as in the past, but revolve around Bitcoin and related core products, forming a closed loop where only institutions and professional players can get the meat. The biggest change in this bull market may be that it is building an exclusive wealth channel for a certain group of people.