Bitcoin bulls who still think the cycle peak has yet to come as retail investors haven’t piled in yet might be using an outdated playbook, according to a crypto executive.
“The idea that the cycle isn’t over just because onchain retail activity is absent needs reconsideration,” CryptoQuant founder and CEO Ki Young Ju said in a March 19 X post.
Ju said that those tracking retail movements using only onchain metrics will not have seen the full picture.
“Retail is likely entering through ETFs — the paper Bitcoin layer — which doesn’t show up onchain,” Ju said.
“This keeps the realized cap lower than if the funds were flowing directly to exchange deposit wallets,” he added, noting that 80% of spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) flows come from retail investors — a trend that Binance analysts already once observed in October last year.
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