BlockBeats news: On July 1, Ki Young Ju, CEO of CryptoQuant, noted that Bitcoin’s capital efficiency is significantly declining. In 2011, a net capital inflow of just $2.7 billion drove a price surge of 55,436%, whereas in the current cycle, a net inflow of $697 billion has resulted in only a 689% increase. An even more striking comparison: the realized market cap required to double Bitcoin’s price has grown from approximately $5 million in 2011 to around $101 billion in this cycle—a reduction in efficiency of over 2,000 times. “Realized market cap” represents the actual capital absorbed on-chain, calculated by the last price at which each coin was moved, rather than the theoretical market cap based on order books, making it a more accurate measure of the true volume of capital entering the market.
Despite the seemingly grim data, Ki Young Ju remains optimistic about BTC, arguing that the next parabolic bull market requires deeper institutional allocation—Bitcoin cannot be driven solely by retail investors and ETFs; it must become a core macro asset, and this transition is still in its early stages. Ki Young Ju notes that if Bitcoin can absorb over $1 trillion in realized market value, another parabolic bull run remains within consideration, especially given gold’s approximately $27 trillion market cap, which suggests vast potential for large-scale institutional adoption of Bitcoin. The next major bull market will require net capital inflows in the trillions of dollars; the “simple model” is over, but the “institutional model” has just begun.