Why has ETH been in a long-term slump? Because ETH is currently in a historic transition phase.
One perspective is that we are in a transition phase, where large financial institutions on Wall Street are becoming the new players, gradually taking over the chips from the previous players.
We can also validate this from the data: over the past year, the market share of the top 100 holding addresses has been on the rise, currently reaching 66%, especially after the approval of the ETH ETF, which saw a significant increase.
This indicates that the concentration of ETH is actually getting higher.
The leading addresses have been buying, yet the price of ETH has not risen, what does this mean?
On one hand, it shows that the players are still present and are continuously accumulating; on the other hand, it indicates that there is a lot of turnover in the market, not only are retail investors losing their chips, but also this group of leading addresses is internally exchanging hands, essentially transitioning the players.
It is important to note that ETH and BTC are the only two tokens with an ETF, and ETH has a significant advantage over BTC: staking rewards.
Once the ETF starts offering staking rewards or even re-staking, an annual risk-free return of at least 3% in coin terms is actually very attractive, especially compared to traditional financial products.
This represents the untapped potential of ETH and is a potential major benefit.
Naturally, traditional financial institutions will not miss out on this opportunity and have a strong willingness and motivation to become the new players of ETH.
However, ETH has already been the main narrative through two cycles of bull and bear markets, meaning there are naturally many long-term holders, and the chips are quite dispersed, so the turnover of these chips will require a relatively long time and need sufficient market clearing.
Therefore, to long-term suppress the price of ETH and encourage previous long-term holders to sell their chips, such as by shifting to popular alternatives like SOL, is necessary to concentrate the chips into the hands of the new players.
Only when the new players have accumulated enough chips will there be the motivation to drive up the price of ETH.
This is a deliberate scheme.
So, do not discard the truly valuable chips in your hand, namely BTC and ETH; enduring this long and painful market cleansing is necessary to achieve the long-term gains you truly desire.
