A two-speed bull market
Something unusual is happening in this crypto bull cycle: the party atmosphere is clearly on the institutional finance side, but the dance floor remains desperately empty for retail investors. That’s essentially the assessment made by JP Richardson, CEO of Exodus — one of the most popular crypto wallets among the general public — in a recent statement that sparked reactions across the community.
Where previous cycles, particularly 2020-2021, were fueled by overflowing enthusiasm from retail players (dreaming of yachts and Lamborghinis between Dogecoin tweets), the current market operates on a fundamentally different logic: investment funds, family offices, and corporate treasuries are driving the rally, while ordinary Joe and Jane watch their bank accounts with a certain bewilderment.
When tight budgets keep people away from crypto
Famous analyst and content creator Michaël van de Poppe put simple words to a complex economic reality: in a context of persistent inflation and eroding purchasing power, retail investors simply have other priorities than buying Bitcoin or Ethereum. Paying rent, groceries, energy bills… these expenses leave little room to speculate on digital assets, however promising they may be.
This explanation, mundane as it is, illustrates a deeper economic fracture. Available capital for investing in risky assets is increasingly concentrated in the hands of those who already have plenty — a dynamic not unique to crypto, but particularly visible there.
Market makers retreat into the shadows of private blockchains
Meanwhile, another phenomenon confirms this accelerating institutionalization of the crypto market: market makers — the actors providing liquidity on exchanges by continuously buying and selling — are increasingly abandoning public blockchains for private or semi-private environments.
Why? To protect their trading strategies. On a public blockchain like Ethereum, every transaction is visible to everyone in real time. This transparency level, one of blockchain technology’s fundamental virtues, paradoxically becomes a problem for professional players whose competitive advantage relies precisely on keeping their methods confidential. In technical terms, we call this “front-running” risk: anyone can observe a large pending transaction and exploit it for profit.
This migration phenomenon toward more opaque execution environments — whether private blockchains, dedicated settlement networks, or so-called “dark pool” solutions — marks a structural market evolution. Professionals are adapting blockchain infrastructure to their needs, rather than the other way around.
A two-speed crypto: Transparency for whom?
There’s something ironically amusing about this situation. Blockchain was invented, among other reasons, to democratize finance and offer everyone transparent access to the same information. Now the market’s most powerful players are moving away from it precisely because it’s too transparent for their business.
Meanwhile, retail users — those who would actually benefit most from this transparency — are nowhere to be found, busy juggling their monthly budgets.
We’re witnessing a double shift: on one hand, institutions are capturing public crypto markets like spot Bitcoin, which has benefited since late 2023 from SEC-approved ETFs in the United States, making institutional access simpler than ever. On the other, those same institutions are building private pipelines for their most sophisticated trading activities.
Perspective: Toward permanent institutional crypto?
This cycle confirms a long-standing trend: crypto no longer really resembles the financial wild west populated by enlightened amateurs and Sunday speculators that captured minds between 2017 and 2021. The rules are changing, and so are the players.
This doesn’t necessarily mean retail investors are permanently locked out — cycles have a habit of renewing, and appetite for spectacular gains remains alive in the general population. But it raises important questions about the true nature of the “financial democratization” that crypto promised to embody.
A bull market whose fuel comes primarily from major funds rather than millions of small investors is perhaps a crypto that has matured — but hasn’t yet decided if it really wanted to grow for everyone.