CryptoQuant Founder: The cost of doubling BTC has increased by 20,000 times, where does the 100 billion buy order come from?

Author: CryptoSlate

Compiled by: Shenchao TechFlow

Shenchao Introduction: ETF capital outflows, institutions holding back, AI snatching investors’ attention... Bitcoin has become too big for retail investors to move it. CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju did the math: In 2011, $2.7 million could drive BTC up 550x, but now it takes $101 billion to double it. Whether the next bull market can arrive depends on whether wealth advisors, corporate treasuries, banks, and sovereign funds are willing to treat BTC as a long-term allocation—not a short-term trade.

Bitcoin’s next major surge may no longer depend on whether investors believe in this asset; instead, it will depend on how much large capital is willing to participate with real money.

The latest analysis from CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju shows that the world’s largest cryptocurrency has grown into a market so large that it can no longer be easily pushed like in early cycles. He said each bull market cycle requires more capital to generate a smaller percentage gain, which raises the bar for seeing a parabolic-style rally again.

This point is especially important now because BTC is in a prolonged bear market. Its value has fallen to around $63,000, down 50% from a peak of more than $126,000 recorded in October last year.

This pullback is testing how much institutional adoption has helped push the asset into mainstream investment portfolios. The core question now is whether Bitcoin can attract enough persistent capital to offset declining price sensitivity.

A Bigger Market Changes the Cycle Math

Bitcoin’s early upswings were built on a much smaller base, meaning a small amount of new capital could trigger massive price changes. As the asset matures, this relationship has weakened.

Ju’s analysis compares the growth in Bitcoin’s realized market capitalization across several bull cycles with the subsequent price gains. Realized market capitalization values each coin based on the price when it last moved on-chain, making it a commonly used proxy for how much capital the network has absorbed.

Ju said that in the 2011 cycle, roughly $2.7 billion in net capital inflows was associated with a price surge of about 55,000%.

The current cycle has absorbed approximately $697 billion, producing a gain of about 689%. This highlights that as the asset’s size expands, far more capital is needed to generate smaller percentage increases.

Figure: Bitcoin Price Returns and Upper Limits of Realized Gains

Source: CryptoQuant

The same pattern shows up in smaller increments. Ju said that in 2011, about $5 million in new capital was enough to double Bitcoin’s price. In the current cycle, that number is about $101 billion.

While this doesn’t end the bullish view on BTC, it changes the type of demand required to sustain that view.

Ju believes that another major rally is still possible if Bitcoin becomes a deeper macro allocation. “Bitcoin needs to become a core macro asset,” he wrote, adding that the market can no longer rely solely on ETF trading driven by retail investors.

This view turns Bitcoin’s next cycle into a test of how financial markets integrate it. The supply shock from halving is still reducing new issuance, but the growth trajectory is increasingly determined by whether capital allocators view Bitcoin as a recurring portfolio position rather than a tactical trade.

ETF Outflows Undermine the Near-Term Setup

This test arrives during a difficult period for the market’s most prominent institutional tool.

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, launched in 2024, helped broaden access by providing a regulated path into the asset for advisors, hedge funds, and traditional investors. But recently, capital flows have turned negative, weakening the argument that institutional demand is already deep enough to support another major upswing.

Santiment data shows that since the beginning of May, Bitcoin ETFs have seen nearly $10 billion in outflows. The 12 products are currently in a streak of 8 consecutive weeks of outflows.

On these figures, the BTC-focused analytics platform Ecoinometrics said:

“Since May, the pattern has been extremely one-sided. Every attempt to rebuild buying momentum stalls almost immediately. Bitcoin ETFs have failed to achieve more than one consecutive day of inflows, while the streaks of outflows repeatedly last for multiple days, eventually reaching the longest outflow period since the ETFs were launched.”

Figure: Bitcoin ETF Outflows

Source: Ecoinometrics

These outflows make it harder for prices to quickly return to highs. Bitcoin’s October record happened when investors were still rewarding ETF access and viewing the asset as benefiting from more favorable policies, greater institutional participation, and broader connections to global markets.

Now, ETF weakness suggests that access alone is not enough. The next phase of adoption requires more stable allocations across wealth platforms, model portfolios, corporate balance sheets, and other pools of capital—funds that move more slowly than retail traders but can be deployed on a much larger scale.

For Bitcoin, this creates a demand landscape that is higher quality but harder to win. Institutions may write bigger checks, but before allocations become durable, they also need liquidity, risk controls, custody standards, portfolio authorization, and compliance approvals.

Institutions Are Still Participating, But Standards Are Stricter

Despite these massive outflows, Coinbase’s survey data suggests that institutional interest has not disappeared.

A survey of 351 institutional decision-makers conducted by Coinbase and EY-Parthenon in January 2026 found that nearly three-quarters plan to increase crypto allocations, while 74% expect crypto prices to rise over the next 12 months.

The same survey found that 49% place greater emphasis on risk management, liquidity, and position sizing.

This combination matters for Bitcoin’s capital problem. Institutions do not approach crypto with the same behaviors that defined early retail-driven cycles.

They are more likely to require regulated products, clear governance, operational resilience, and explicit limits on exposure.

The survey found that 66% of respondents already have exposure through spot crypto ETFs or exchange-traded products, while 81% prefer spot exposure through registered vehicles.

These findings support the view that regulated wrapper products remain central to the next phase of adoption.

However, they also show why recent ETF outflows have become a pressure point. If ETFs are the primary institutional entry point, sustained weakness in these products could slow the broader allocation process.

So Bitcoin’s capital efficiency problem is two-sided. Its larger size may make the asset more acceptable to traditional finance.

But that larger size also means marginal buyers must be bigger, more consistent, and less speculative than the buyers that drove earlier cycles.

Bitcoin’s Next Batch of Buyers Must Compete with Other Wall Street Assets

This makes Bitcoin’s next cycle dependent on a broader base of investors than just the retail traders and crypto-native funds that drove earlier rallies.

Michael Saylor, Executive Chairman of Strategy, believes Bitcoin’s next decade will be driven less by miner issuance and more by capital flows across financial markets. Strategy is Bitcoin’s largest corporate holder, making Saylor one of the most visible advocates for treating the asset as a balance sheet tool rather than a speculative trade.

According to him:

“In the next decade, Bitcoin’s trajectory will be driven less by miner issuance and more by capital flows. ETF flows. Corporate treasury flows. Sovereign reserve flows. Bank credit flows. Derivatives flows. Insurance flows. Collateral flows. Structured credit flows. Global savings flows. Halving tightens supply. Capital flows set the growth trajectory. This is the next phase of Bitcoin adoption: not just more buyers, but more balance sheets.”

The point is that Bitcoin’s supply story is no longer new. Its issuance schedule is known, halving cycles are understandable, and the asset already trades at a size where it requires larger capital pools to push it meaningfully higher.

Therefore, any new repricing must come from demand channels capable of absorbing value exceeding a market worth of $1 trillion.

This means ETF demand is only part of the shift. A stronger cycle may require advisors to add Bitcoin to model portfolios, companies to use it more aggressively on balance sheets, banks to build credit products around it, insurers and asset managers to treat it as a macro allocation, and sovereign entities to consider exposure over time.

This shift may be slower than retail momentum cycles. It also makes Bitcoin more exposed to interest-rate expectations, regulatory delays, liquidity shocks, and competition with other markets that are also chasing the same institutional capital.

Notably, artificial intelligence has become one of these competitors. AI-related assets and infrastructure have absorbed a large share of investors’ attention this year, with spending and investment forecasts reaching into the trillions of dollars.

In earlier crypto cycles, looser speculative capital may have flowed into Bitcoin more easily. In today’s market, Bitcoin must compete for the same pool of institutional funding with AI stocks, private infrastructure deals, credit products, commodities, and other macro trades.

This competition is now at the center of the Bitcoin cycle debate. The asset is already large enough to enter mainstream allocation discussions, but that also means it must be compared against every other major use of capital.

The views expressed by the author of this article are solely their own and do not represent the views of CryptoSlate. Any information you read on CryptoSlate should not be considered investment advice, and CryptoSlate does not endorse any projects mentioned or linked to in this article. Buying, selling, and trading cryptocurrencies should be considered high-risk activities. You should conduct your own due diligence before taking any action related to the contents of this article. Finally, CryptoSlate assumes no responsibility if you incur losses when trading cryptocurrencies. For more information, please refer to our company disclaimer.

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