$120,000 Bitcoin: A Capital Feast Without Retail Investors

July 14, 2025, Bitcoin broke through the historical threshold of $120,000, and Wall Street institutions raised their glasses in celebration. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, 135,800 retail investors were staring at the glaring liquidation notifications on their phone screens—$493 million in wealth vanished within 24 hours.

Social media was devoid of retail exuberance memes, no "getting rich overnight" posts, only BlackRock's ETF purchase orders rolling in silently at 13 per second. This capital feast, dubbed the "silent bull market," is profoundly changing the power structure of the cryptocurrency market.

01 Institutional Entry: A Carefully Planned Power Transfer

The cryptocurrency market is undergoing an unprecedented reconstruction of capital power, with institutional investors systematically positioning themselves to take control of the market.

• Custody Breakthrough: Traditional financial giants like BlackRock and Fidelity were the first to break through regulatory barriers and establish compliant custody channels. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust alone manages over $80 billion in assets, holding more than 700,000 BTC. The entry of these "financial aircraft carriers" has opened the floodgates for subsequent capital flows.
• Product Matrix Expansion: Bitcoin spot ETFs are just the starting point. Following closely are futures ETFs, leveraged ETFs, Bitcoin-backed loans, and other structured products, forming a complete institutional-level investment toolbox. When the Japanese listed company Metaplanet increased its holdings by 797 BTC in a single day, bringing its total holdings to 16,352 BTC, a revolution in corporate balance sheets quietly occurred.
• Asset Restructuring Wave: Cryptocurrencies are being reclassified as strategic reserve assets. MicroStrategy's holdings surpassed 528,000 BTC, valued at $35.63 billion; even the German central bank has begun selling gold to hold Bitcoin. This asset restructuring has driven the exchange's Bitcoin inventory to a five-year low, completely reversing the supply-demand relationship.

02 Retail Marginalization: The Capital Game Behind High Walls

As institutions take center stage, ordinary investors find themselves being pushed out of this feast. Data shows that the proportion of large transactions over $100,000 has surged to 89%, an increase of 23 percentage points from 2022.

The market structure has fundamentally changed:

• Volatility decreased but liquidations became more concentrated: Although Bitcoin's three-month cumulative increase exceeded 40%, a 5% single-day drop on July 15 triggered liquidations for 135,800 people, evaporating 3.54 billion yuan in wealth. 80% of liquidation losses came from long positions, with high-leverage retail investors becoming the primary victims of market volatility.
• Wall Street's monopoly on pricing power: The simultaneous existence of exchange inventory shortages and an increase in whale addresses (with 2,135 addresses holding over 1,000 BTC) indicates that institutions are completing large transactions through over-the-counter (OTC) trading, bypassing the public market and deeply affecting it. When BlackRock injects $380 million into the market daily, retail orders have become mere market noise.
• Psychological barriers and data gaps: After Bitcoin broke $120,000, Google search interest peaked at only 45, less than one-third of the peak when it first broke $100,000 in November 2024; the fear and greed index stood at 73, far below historical peaks. The lament of Japanese retail investors, "One coin costs $110,000? I've already missed it!" reflects the collective sense of powerlessness among global retail investors.

03 Hidden Risks: Cracks Beneath the Feast

Institutionalization has not eliminated risks; rather, it has given rise to new systemic threats.

Stablecoins become dual focal points for regulation and crime:

• Hong Kong's "Stablecoin Regulation" will take effect on August 1, requiring 100% reserve assets to be stored separately; the U.S. "GENIUS Act" further demands the ability to "freeze involved tokens within 10 minutes." However, in cross-border money laundering cases, individual criminals control over 200 wallet addresses to disperse funds, rendering traditional risk control systems ineffective.
• The amount involved in illegal currency exchange using virtual currencies is staggering—one case in Shanghai involved 6.5 billion yuan in cross-border arbitrage. Tether (USDT) has become a "wash trading" tool, with criminal groups constructing profit models through high fees of 1%-3% and bidirectional arbitrage strategies.
• Regulatory arbitrage through pseudo-decentralized protocols is even more covert. Some projects, under the guise of "compliance," actually issue unregulated stablecoins through offshore shell companies; frequent technical vulnerabilities have led to a loss of $180 million in Q2 2025 due to signature verification failures in the Wormhole cross-chain bridge.

04 New Risk Forms: The Fatal Traps of an Institutionalized Market

• The flash crash of Kinto tokens serves as the best risk footnote for the institutionalized market. On July 10, the project suffered a hacker attack due to a contract vulnerability, causing prices to plummet by 90%, with market capitalization evaporating to less than $2 million. This "precise strike" exposes new forms of risk.
• Mining giant Canaan's gross margin dropped sharply from 42% to 29%, as high computational power competition eroded safety cushions. Meanwhile, Tether issued 4 billion USDT in a single week, with the stablecoin supply growth rate (SSR) exceeding 1.2, and the perpetual contract funding rate reaching a yearly high—these numbers reflect the silent accumulation of leverage bubbles.
• As $125,000 gathers $3.7 billion in options contracts, a showdown between bulls and bears is imminent. Institutional investors hold an advantageous position through derivative tools and hedging strategies, while retail investors are forced out of the high-leverage game.

The wave of institutionalization is reshaping the rules of the game: the volatility curve is being flattened, the price discovery mechanism is monopolized by OTC trading, and even market sentiment is being redefined by institutional holding reports. When the German central bank exchanges gold for Bitcoin, and when listed companies classify crypto assets as strategic reserves, the utopian narrative of blockchain has completely yielded to the revolution of balance sheets. Cryptocurrencies are no longer disrupting traditional finance; they have become the sharpest new weapon of traditional finance.