Why has ETH been sluggish for a long time?

One perspective on the reason for ETH's long-term sluggishness is that we are currently in a phase of changing hands, where large financial institutions on Wall Street are becoming the new players, gradually taking over the chips from the previous wild players.

Over the past year, the market share of the top 100 holding addresses has shown an upward trend, currently reaching 66%, especially after the approval of ETH's ETF, which saw a significant increase.

This indicates that the concentration of ETH is actually increasing. The top addresses have been buying, but the price of ETH has not risen, which indicates what?

On one hand, it shows that the major players are still present and are continuously accumulating chips; on the other hand, it indicates that there is a lot of turnover in the market, not only are retail investors discarding chips, but this group of top addresses is also exchanging chips internally, which means changing hands.

It is important to note that ETH and BTC are the only two tokens with ETFs, and ETH has a significant advantage over BTC: staking rewards.

Once the ETF opens up for staking rewards or even re-staking, a risk-free return of at least 3% in terms of the coin's value per year is actually very attractive, especially compared to traditional financial products.

This is the untapped potential of ETH and also the biggest potential 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 during two cycles of bull and bear markets, so there are naturally many long-term holders, and the chips are relatively dispersed. Therefore, the turnover time for these chips will take a relatively long time and will require a thorough washout.

Thus, ETH prices need to be suppressed in the long term, forcing previous long-term holders to discard their chips, for example, by shifting to popular alternatives like SOL, in order to concentrate the chips into the hands of the new players.

Once the new players have accumulated enough chips, there will be motivation to drive up ETH prices.

This is a grand scheme.

Therefore, do not discard the truly valuable chips in your hands, namely BTC and ETH; by enduring this long and painful washout, you can achieve the long-term gains you truly desire.