Opinion: Bitcoin's Simple Mode Has Ended, Next Bull Run Requires Trillions in Institutional Funds

BlockBeats News, July 1st, CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju pointed out that Bitcoin's capital efficiency is significantly declining. In 2011, only a net inflow of $2.7 billion was needed to drive the price up by 55,436%, while the current cycle has seen a net inflow of $697 billion, resulting in only a 689% increase. A more intuitive comparison is: the realized cap needed for Bitcoin's price to double has expanded from about $5 million in 2011 to approximately $101 billion in this cycle, a decrease in efficiency of over 2000 times. "Realized cap" represents the actual absorbed capital calculated based on the final transaction price on-chain, rather than the theoretical market cap formed by the order book, thus more accurately reflecting the volume of funds entering.

Despite the seemingly grim data, Ki Young Ju remains optimistic about BTC, believing that the next parabolic bull market requires deeper institutional adoption—Bitcoin cannot rely solely on retail investors and ETFs to drive it, it must become a core macro asset, a transformation that is still in its early stages. Ki Young Ju pointed out that if Bitcoin can absorb over $1 trillion of realized cap, another parabolic bull market is still within the realm of consideration. Compared to gold's market cap of around $27 trillion, Bitcoin still has a huge institutional adoption space. The next major bull market will require net inflows on the scale of trillions of dollars, the "easy mode" is over, but the "institutional mode" is just beginning.