Người sáng lập CryptoQuant: Chi phí để BTC tăng gấp đôi đã tăng 20,000 lần, lệnh mua 1000 tỷ từ đâu mà có?

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Author: CryptoSlate

Compiled by: Deep潮 TechFlow

Deep潮 Summary: ETF outflows, institutional wait-and-see, AI stealing investor attention... Bitcoin has grown too large for retail investors to push its price. CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju crunched the numbers: In 2011, $2.7 million could drive BTC up 550x; now, $101 billion is needed to double it. Whether the next bull run arrives 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 hinge on whether investors believe in the asset, but on how much big money is willing to participate with real capital.

According to a new analysis by CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju, the world’s largest cryptocurrency has grown into a market too large to be easily moved like in earlier cycles. He says each bull run requires more capital to generate smaller percentage gains, raising the bar for another parabolic rise.

This becomes particularly important now, as BTC is in a prolonged bear market, with its value dropping to around $63,000, a 50% decline from the peak above $126,000 recorded in October last year.

This pullback tests the institutional adoption that helped drive the asset into mainstream portfolios. The core question now is whether Bitcoin can attract enough persistent capital to offset its declining price sensitivity.

A larger market changes the cycle math

Bitcoin’s early rallies were built on a much smaller base, allowing small amounts of new capital to produce huge price changes. As the asset matured, this relationship weakened.

Ju’s analysis compares the growth in Bitcoin’s realized market cap to subsequent price gains across several bull cycles. Realized market cap is calculated based on the price at which each coin last moved on-chain, making it a common proxy for the amount of capital absorbed by the network.

Ju says that in the 2011 cycle, net capital inflows of about $27 billion were associated with a price gain of roughly 55,000%.

The current cycle has absorbed approximately $697 billion, generating a gain of about 689%, highlighting that as the asset grows, far more capital is needed to produce smaller gains.

Figure: Bitcoin price returns and realized cap gains

Source: CryptoQuant

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

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

Ju believes that if Bitcoin becomes a deeper macro allocation, another significant rally is still possible. "Bitcoin needs to become a core macro asset," he writes, adding that the market can no longer rely solely on retail-driven ETF trading.

This view turns Bitcoin’s next cycle into a test of financial market integration. The supply shock from halvings is still reducing new issuance, but the growth trajectory increasingly depends on whether capital allocators see Bitcoin as a recurring portfolio position rather than a tactical trade.

ETF outflows weaken the near-term setup

This test arrives as the market’s most visible institutional tool faces a tough period.

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs helped broaden access after their launch in 2024, providing advisors, hedge funds, and traditional investors a regulated path into the asset. But recent capital flows have turned negative, weakening the argument that institutional demand is deep enough to support another major rally.

Santiment data shows that since early May, Bitcoin ETFs have seen nearly $10 billion in outflows, with the 12 products currently in an eight-week outflow streak.

Commenting on these numbers, the BTC-focused analytics platform Ecoinometrics said:

"The pattern since May has been very one-sided. Every attempt to rebuild buying momentum has stalled almost immediately. Bitcoin ETFs have failed to achieve more than one consecutive day of inflows, while the number of consecutive outflow days repeatedly stretches to several days, eventually reaching the longest outflow streak since the ETFs launched."

Figure: Bitcoin ETF outflows

Source: Ecoinometrics

These outflows complicate a quick return to highs. Bitcoin’s October record occurred when investors were still rewarding ETF access and viewing the asset as a beneficiary of friendlier policies, institutional engagement, and broader connections to global markets.

Now, the ETF weakness shows that access alone is not enough. The next stage of adoption requires more stable allocations across wealth platforms, model portfolios, corporate balance sheets, and other capital pools that move slower than retail traders but can deploy in much larger sizes.

For Bitcoin, this creates a higher-quality but harder-to-win demand landscape. Institutions may bring larger checks, but before allocations become persistent, they also need liquidity, risk control, custody standards, portfolio mandates, and compliance approvals.

Institutions are still involved, but standards are stricter

Despite these heavy outflows, Coinbase survey data suggests institutional interest hasn’t disappeared.

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

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

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

They are more likely to demand regulated products, clear governance, operational resilience, and defined exposure limits.

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

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

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

Thus, Bitcoin’s capital efficiency problem cuts both ways. Its larger size may make the asset more acceptable to traditional finance.

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

Bitcoin’s next buyers must compete with other Wall Street assets

This makes Bitcoin’s next cycle dependent on a broader investor base than the retail traders and crypto-native funds that fueled 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 the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, making Saylor one of the most visible advocates for viewing the asset as a balance sheet tool rather than a speculative trade.

According to him:

"In the next decade, Bitcoin’s trajectory will be less driven by miner issuance and more by capital flows. ETF flows. Corporate treasury flows. Sovereign reserve flows. Bank credit flows. Derivative flows. Insurance flows. Collateral flows. Structured credit flows. Global savings flows. Halvings tighten 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, the halving cycles are understandable, and the asset already trades at a size requiring larger capital pools to move it meaningfully.

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

This means ETF demand is just one part of this 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 see it as a macro allocation, and sovereign entities to consider exposure over time.

This shift may be slower than retail momentum cycles. It will also expose Bitcoin more to interest rate expectations, regulatory delays, liquidity shocks, and competition from other markets 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 investor attention this year, with spending and investment forecasts reaching trillions of dollars.

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

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

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