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

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 that the realized cap needed to double the Bitcoin price has inflated 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 on-chain based on the latest moving price, 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 allocation—Bitcoin cannot rely solely on retail investors and ETFs to drive it, it must become a core macro asset, a transition that is still in its early stages. Ki Young Ju pointed out that if Bitcoin could absorb a realized cap of over $1 trillion, another parabolic bull market is still within consideration range. Compared to gold's market cap of about $27 trillion, Bitcoin still has a huge space for institutional mass adoption. The next round of the bull market will require a net inflow of trillions of dollars, the "easy mode" has ended, but the "institutional mode" is just beginning.