In the Eastern Eight Time Zone, Bitcoin's price has surged past the $97,000 mark this week, with a 24-hour increase of approximately 2.2%. Coupled with a net inflow of about $844 million into spot ETFs in a single day, the previously wavering sentiment has quickly turned extremely bullish. On one hand, Bitcoin continues to strengthen under the support of institutional buying and ETF tools, while on the other hand, tens of millions of tokens are gradually going to zero between 2021 and 2025, with around 11.6 million tokens disappearing in 2025 alone, leading to a brutal "great liquidation." This article outlines the current landscape of Bitcoin and altcoins' accelerated differentiation, focusing on price trends, ETF and institutional funds, changes in exchange dynamics, and token survival data.
Bitcoin Approaches $100,000: Market and ETF Funds Resonance
● Price Performance and Rhythm: Bitcoin recently broke through $97,000, with a 24-hour increase of about 2.2%, after a period of high-level consolidation. This latest rise is not merely a one-sided emotional surge but is driven by new funds attempting to reach new highs after previous chip turnover and floating chips were cleaned up.
● ETF Net Inflows Amplify Buying Pressure: According to single-source data, Bitcoin's spot ETF recorded a net inflow of about $844 million in a single day. Given the relatively limited circulation of Bitcoin, the combination of passive and active allocations at the ETF level has created sustained marginal buying pressure, pushing the price closer to the $100,000 threshold.
● Fund-Dominated Characteristics: The market generally believes that "the inflow of Bitcoin ETF funds indicates that institutional demand remains strong." Spot ETFs provide a compliant and low-friction entry channel for traditional funds, making this round of price increases more like asset allocation and long-term funds taking the lead, rather than the typical "bull market peak" driven by high leverage and short-term retail sentiment seen in the previous cycle.
● Data Boundaries and Limitations: It is important to emphasize that the currently confirmed net inflow of about $844 million is only a snapshot of a phase; the brief does not provide precise daily inflow dates or a complete historical outflow record. Thus, these ETF data are more suitable as a tool for observing current fund trends rather than as a basis for making definitive judgments about Bitcoin's medium- to long-term trends.
$40 Trillion Giant Bets: JPMorgan and the "Digital Gold" Narrative
JPMorgan currently manages assets totaling about $40 trillion, and its internal forecast predicts that Bitcoin could see over $13 billion in inflows by 2026. This figure itself reflects a significant shift in the attitudes of traditional financial giants. If Wall Street's early views on Bitcoin were still stuck in stereotypes of bubbles and speculation, at least some fund management institutions have now begun to include it in formal asset allocation discussions. From the perspective of asset allocation, such predictions imply that Bitcoin is increasingly viewed as a "digital gold" allocation tool, or as an alternative asset alongside commodities, real estate investment trusts, and private equity, capable of complementing traditional asset portfolios in terms of inflation hedging, uncorrelated returns, and macro hedging. In the context of ongoing capital inflows into spot ETFs, Bitcoin's institutional path is evolving at a pace of "first tools are established, then large funds gradually increase allocation": ETFs provide the infrastructure, followed by gradual increases in holdings by pension funds, sovereign funds, and family offices, rather than a one-time heavy investment. It should be noted that the forecast of $13 billion in inflows is marked in the brief as pending verification, and should therefore be viewed as a directional judgment and sentiment signal rather than a rigid commitment or clear quota from JPMorgan regarding Bitcoin.
Binance's Share Drops to 25%: Invisible Pressure on Centralized Platforms
● Reality of Share Decline: Recent data indicates that Binance's share in the spot crypto trading market has fallen to about 25%, the lowest level since early 2021. For a platform that has long held an absolute leading position, this change in proportion signifies that its relative advantage is being weakened, and industry discourse is no longer highly concentrated on a single platform.
● Industry Explosion and Liquidity Diversification: If we observe Binance's share decline against a larger industry base, the contrast becomes even more pronounced— the total number of crypto projects surged from about 428,000 in 2021 to nearly 20 million in 2025. The explosive growth in project supply inevitably disperses trading demand and liquidity, making it difficult for any single centralized exchange to "dominate the entire market" as it did in earlier years.
● Possible Sources of Multiple Pressures: In this environment, traditional CEXs face multiple potential pressures: first, the rise of more compliant, regional exchanges catering to local users and institutional demand; second, derivatives platforms such as contracts and options siphoning off a large volume of high-frequency trading; third, some funds shifting towards on-chain liquidity pools and innovative protocols, reducing reliance on centralized matching systems. However, current data is insufficient to attribute any single factor as the dominant cause; it appears more like a combination of various forces slowly reshaping the landscape.
● Attribution Still Pending Verification: Especially regarding whether increased regulatory pressure or competition from decentralized trading platforms constitutes the "main reason" for Binance's share decline, related information in the brief is marked as pending verification. In the absence of more complete on-chain data and a timeline of regulatory events, simply attributing changes in market dynamics to a single variable is neither rigorous nor helpful for decision-making.
Twenty Million Projects Reduced to Ashes: Bitcoin Survivors Amidst the 2 Million Zeroing Tide
From 2021 to 2025, the crypto market experienced an unprecedented round of token expansion and elimination. The brief shows that in just 2025, about 11.6 million tokens went to zero, accounting for approximately 86.3% of the total number of tokens that went to zero between 2021 and 2025. During the same period, the total number of crypto projects surged from about 428,000 to nearly 20 million. The data reveals an extreme Matthew effect: the barrier to launching a token has become increasingly low, with the speed of issuance and listing far exceeding that of traditional financial products, yet very few projects can establish a foothold in terms of liquidity, application implementation, and community consensus. The description that "the cryptocurrency market experienced the largest scale of token elimination in history in 2025" is not an exaggeration; a large number of projects were completely abandoned by the market after running out of liquidity, zero trading volume, team dissolution, or complete abandonment of maintenance, essentially representing a systematic cleansing of the speculative bubble of the past few years. More significantly, in this round of cleansing, Bitcoin not only did not suffer structural drag but instead surged towards $97,000, receiving dual endorsements from ETF net inflows and institutional allocation predictions. This has gradually formed a clearer dividing line within the market: on one side are the "survivors" viewed by institutions as having long-term narratives and asset attributes, while on the other side are numerous altcoins primarily based on short-term concepts and high-leverage speculation, which are being liquidated in batches during cyclical fluctuations.
From HYPE Liquidation to NVDA On-Chain Trading: Divergence of Two Risk Tracks
A whale-level trader's long position in HYPE was forcibly liquidated in the past 45 days, resulting in a loss of approximately $7.169 million, illustrating the brutal consequences of high-leverage speculation in the market. Even in an environment where Bitcoin's price continues to rise and overall sentiment is bullish, mismatched leverage ratios and directions can still erase millions of dollars in capital in a very short time. Meanwhile, the pace of derivative innovation has shown no signs of slowing down. The Pendle platform has launched the NVDAUSDC-Hyperliquid market, connecting the popular U.S. stock NVIDIA (NVDA) with on-chain liquidity, allowing traditional equity assets to appear in the crypto ecosystem through on-chain derivative forms. This scenario indicates that as leading assets like Bitcoin become more stable on the institutional path, the marginal market is accelerating the invention of more complex, higher-leverage, and more layered risk gambling—ranging from small-cap token options to structured products across markets and asset classes. In this dual-track parallel structure, investors must clearly distinguish between "Bitcoin as an asset allocation tool" and "high-risk speculative games on-chain," as these are two completely different tracks. Blending Bitcoin's volatility, extreme leverage strategies, and the zeroing risks of small market cap tokens not only hinders risk management but may also lead to systemic misjudgments about overall industry risks.
Digital Gold Solidifies Leadership: How Retail Investors Position Themselves Amidst the Great Liquidation
In summary, Bitcoin is transitioning from a single high-volatility speculative asset to one with long-term allocation value, driven by multiple factors such as the implementation of spot ETF tools, continued institutional buying, and large investment banks providing allocation expectations. Whether it is the $844 million single-day ETF net inflow or the directional forecast of $13 billion in potential mid-term funds, both point to the same reality: Bitcoin's position in the traditional asset world is moving from the margins to the mainstream. In stark contrast is the "other half of the market," represented by altcoins and high-leverage products. From 11.6 million tokens going to zero in 2025, to Binance's spot share dropping to 25%, and HYPE whale's $7.169 million liquidation, these fragments piece together a brutal survival of the fittest: liquidity and attention are concentrating on leading assets and compliant infrastructures, while marginal projects and excessive leverage are rapidly cleared in the elimination race. In this structural differentiation, investment needs to return to the quality of assets and long-term demand itself, with priority given to understanding where the funds come from, through what tools they enter, and on what assets they stay, rather than chasing every new narrative or every story of "the next tenfold coin." In the next phase, it is worth continuously tracking, first, the evolution of Bitcoin ETF fund data to gauge the pace of institutional allocation; second, the product forms of further integration between traditional finance and crypto, such as Bitcoin-backed credit cards, which create more frequent intersections between crypto assets and real consumption and credit systems; and finally, the regulatory environment changes in major jurisdictions, which will profoundly impact the boundaries of centralized exchanges, interest-bearing products, and derivative innovations. Only by dynamically assessing these variables can retail and institutional investors grasp structural opportunities as much as possible in the landscape of "digital gold solidifying its leadership and altcoins accelerating liquidation," while keeping systemic risks within manageable limits.
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