ARK this round of correction has exposed an interesting phenomenon—the on-chain data depicting the long-short landscape is quite distorted.

The number of bullish whales has a clear advantage (69 vs. 42), and their positions are also larger. But this is not good news. Their average entry price is 0.2717, while the current price is 0.2555, so each position is in the red zone. Although they haven't realized losses on paper yet, that's because their position sizes are supporting them; the pressure is actually significant.

The bears are much more comfortable. Although their entry price is higher (0.2897), they are actually making profits. What does this indicate? In this recent wave of decline, the bears have been gradually cashing out profits.

The retail market is even worse. The long-short ratio of 1.51 seems to favor longs, but only 6.8% of long traders are actually profitable—that's a painfully low number. The vast majority of retail longs are just losing money trying to catch the bottom, but the more they try, the deeper they go.

In simple terms, this decline is a process where institutional bears are hunting retail longs. The whales are bearing the cost pressure, while retail traders are floundering in the shallow waters.