Topic: Will Retail Show Up This Cycle? (Read 345 times)

Yeah, for BTC - it's sand in the shoes, it will bounce back eventually no matter what, others - only time will tell, as you said in other words

This current circle bull-run has been in a majority anticipation and has caused panic of investors holding even above an affordable range of time just to account mutilations of their incomes but due to the current panics of the economy left many with no choice of selling their Bitcoins while some also has been attracted buy and hodl as a FOMO against the threats of the future economy.

Being known that most Alt Coins are only good for short term goals, lot of Investors has regrettably lost their funds with a high tension of reasons to sell off their coins before loosing it all due to their high voltage or volatilities and the anticipated bull-run of the current circle has been like REFUSED to come.

So, while the bull-run is still being ahead of time to come, Bitcoin investors as a result of FOMO are not so much of the panic as much as Alt Coins investors due to their volume of volatilities.

“History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes” ~ Mark Twain.   I dont think we can see a repeat of covid extremes but we dont have to in BTC its growing anyway and doesnt require that amount of speculative action from the masses in order to do well.

A greater element this time is secondary assets like the possible usage of ETF and other balance sheet deposits for Bitcoin.  I think they are already operating buy programs and are involved to a greater extent in 2024 and I believe more so next year.  The rise has been far more linear but I think we've been a bit less volatile then might otherwise been the case were it only small players and a repeat of prior bull markets in Bitcoin.

Retail investors are always on the sidelines, watching and waiting for the moment when they find Bitcoin price to be in an uptrend, influencing altcoins with its moves as well and eventually, creating the conditions for an easy entry and exit on profit where by, you catch the market going up and exit before it thumbs down.

Last bullrun had several things at play with people looking out for means to shop and pay for services, the network congestion that was associated with fintech and banks, coupled with several conditions so happened to have create room for more discovering and understudy of Bitcoin which significantly had a role in how far the bullrun went.

We wouldn’t have that in this season but, might find a different thing at play and that is, the last year’s result would play as an expectation in this forth coming bullrun.

I disagree with this affirmation.

Bitcoin price above all in the first years was almost exclusively driven by retailers. The institutional investors are a relatively new phenomenon, starting with people like Saylor's MicroStrategy in the mid to late 2010s, which was still a quite isolated investment, and then taking off in the 2020s with Tesla, El Salvador etc.. And of course the ETFs, which exist since 2021 in some countries but exploded with 2024's US approval, drove a completely new public into the Bitcoin market.

I think some confuse "retailers" with "new users", which are those who google "buy bitcoin", and are interested more in memecoins than in Bitcoin according to popular belief   But a significant part of the population, in many countries around 5-10%, already has used or held Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency. They will not google "buy bitcoin" anymore, so they may be more difficult to "track". But they are very significant when it comes to their influence on the Bitcoin price. I guess 99% of the Bitcointalk users are "retailers".

Even whales are sometimes retailers, often early adopters, although they are becoming more rare over time.

Retailer investors may ape in this cycle based on each individual's understanding of the market but we shouldn't understand that the institutional investors are the major players in the current crypto market and it will be hard for the retailer investor's accumulation to reflect the market price or trends.

Retailers usually do have only but little impact on the market but they cannot be underestimated too, one very significant difference created between the impact of the retailers and the institutions is that with the retailers their impacts may not be lasting enough but with the institutions it may not be quick enough because its not based off impulse but its effects are usually lasting and very impactful enough. i believe that if the market this time is impacted more by the institutions then its a much more better and preferable option than it will be with the retailers but don't think they will be put out totally because they will be busy this time.

Are you sure they even aped a bit in the last one? We barely got 3x last time, this time people would be happy if they saw 2x because that would be $120k


We also had China ban on mining in the middle of the 2021 bull run, so there's that.

But ratail investors should no be neglected because they are the most important people to the sustainability of Bitcoin. It is the retail Investors that have been keeping Bitcoin active in the previous years that there was no institutional investors. The institutional investors can decide to stop investing in Bitcoin collectively and they will achieve that therefore we should not make the market all about them or we will be heading over the decentralized market into the hands of the centralized institutional investors. Then they can have control of what happens as everybody will be following them to buy or sell. They are already winning but it is not too late to take back the market form their hands. The retail investors need to come together with their number and oppose the institutional investors not following them blindly.

Indeed ridiculous because they are doing it wrong or they are doing it the opposite way according on what you described there. In each side that they choose to do, OG's will always have the chance to take advantage. They are only lucky because I believe that many OG's are still kind and they are already a long-timer in this market, so they won't do such thing as what @Algominer2 is saying there which is to exit liquidity.

Also, I don't think that a simple retailer that will enter can immediately pump up the market but there is a proper time for this and that will only be the time that the OG's will sell their possessions. When it comes to buying, I believe that many OG's now are into DCA method, so they don't usually wait for the dip and buy the coins of the retailers that panic sell when the market is in a bad shape.

Anyways, the crypto adoption is not yet full, so there will always be more people who will come late and usually they are only poor or so-called retailers but they can still learn later on and they will now become an OG too just like the most of us here and that will only be the time for them to revenge and also take advantage of those who are newly entrants in the market.

Which institutions are you referring to? Except for ETFs that have to publish daily buy and sell data, other institutions, whales, sharks, and market makers will not notify you every time they buy. If you want to know what coins they are buying, you need to be knowledgeable, spend time researching, and use paid tools to track those information.

Take a simple example like Grayscale investment fund, since Bitcoin ETF and ETH ETF were approved, they continuously sell Bitcoin and ETH every day. But on their website or social media platforms, they openly announce when they invest in other altcoins projects. Recently, they announced that they invested in SUI and TAO and before that other projects like NEAR, AVAX…they have been investing in many altcoin projects. Many funds and organizations are quietly investing in various altcoin projects.


https://x.com/Grayscale/status/1821170731478356476

Yes, no support from any type of investments, in fact not even SOL, I think btc and eth are the only ones that big companies could buy, and that would make sense considering how big those coins are and the top two, and been around for many years without much issues.

However, I do not think that others will be bought by big companies. What will happen, is that retail have money in big names too, and big companies will put some money too, it will get hyped, the price will go up, people will realize they made as much as they can from the big ones, and they will use some of the profits to buy some smaller stuff, since smaller coins and tokens have lower market cap, it will be easier to make them move higher with a little bit of money and hype, and those low alts will go up because of that.

I agree with you in terms of Bitcoin and major alts (esp ETH and Sol) but what about the other alts and shitcoins? I can't see institutions buying those.

How about the retails pushing it in 2017 though? And as much as we have a lot of whales or we think of them as the one bringing the money, I think it is still us retail and average investors who are still going to pump the price.

And I think most of us are still in the market though, but perhaps waiting for the perfect time to put our saving in the market, just like in 2021. I also have the impressions that retail investors are smarter than average investor. And again, having that wait and feel strategy? it could really be a big swing next year 2025.

I think "retail" was quite active with memecoins in late 2023 and early 2024, and we may have seen a little pause since March/April (the Runes wave in April may have been the last phase where they were really "hot", although altcoins were already declining then).

The Active Addresses indicator is currently low, which could indicate low retail involvement at the moment. It's actually an interesting indicator to discuss, for example the indicator was historically correlated somewhat with price, but since 2023 it took a downward fall, see here. As the decline coincided with the Ordinals wave and in April near the halving the lowest point of this indicator was recorded, it is likely that this indicator is correlated negatively with fees ("higher fees, less active addresses"). It is recovering since the Runes frenzy was over, but very slowly. May be also a seasonal thing as July/August are the main holiday months in many countries in the Northern hemisphere.

However, where "retail" usually really shows up is in the last third or quarter or so of a bull market.

In addition, also "retailers" have access to Bitcoin ETFs in more countries now, most will be focused on the US spot ETF market even if they are in other countries; in addition some of the other ETFs (e.g. the european Jacobi ETF) being restricted to institutional investors. People who have already a securities account at a broker may chose to invest in an ETF instead of in Bitcoin.

PS: regarding
Monero had indeed a really good ROI in the last months. But that was not followed by most other altcoins, even Ethereum lost a lot of traction (despite the ETFs). And the reason for Monero's growth is that it was seriously undervalued after the Binance delisting, recovering slowly and steadily. Zoom out a bit and you'll see the whole picture

But aren't the plebs like us also called "retail"?

 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But we're probably some of the "smarter" plebs/retail because we positioned ourselves during those bearish market cycles when Bitcoin was priced with a discount.

For OP's question of "when" actual retail arrives, that's probably going to be during the part of the cycle when the market's surge and its hype is in its peak level - perhaps 2026?

It will be hard to know when retail is in the market. Back in 2017 and 2021 tops, we could use the Apple Store or Play Store and watch when Coinbase was #1 on the App downloads. This time when it broke the ATH, Coinbase wasnt even close to being Top 10.

Even if people want to invest in Bitcoin, they wont do it on Coinbase or Binanace, they will just buy the ETFs. Sure we can see the flows but we dont know how much of those flows are from retail or from institutions, so there is no guage to find out when retail is active.

Times are changing and this cycle can be different.

Retail investors like us may seem insignificant because we are a small entity, but if more people participate, it will not be as small as you think. In any financial market, retail investors are always in the majority, but we often hear about institutions because it is easier to aggregate their data than retail investors.

Also, as large institutions enter the market, it means they need more liquidity and without retail investors, where will they get liquidity? Why is it that when bull season comes, there will be many stories of investing in memes that make 1000%, 10000% profits? The sole purpose is to attract liquidity into the market and only retail investors like us care about that, institutions will never bother.

In reality, I believe that retail will be of little importance in this cycle. In the last cycle we started talking about institutional adoption, and it is true that it started then, but I think that when it is going to be noticed, when there is going to be real institutional adoption, it is going to be in this cycle. So, whether there are more or less retail investors, I think it will have little impact when compared to institutions buying (or selling) billions.

as ridiculous as it sounds, most of retailer did exactly this like in the past bullrun cycle too, even the recent dips which caused bitcoin to touch $49k, there were so many retailers panicking and selling their coin at that price, which is kinda dumb in my honest opinion, if we're already going down so bad there's always bigger chance that the price could bounce back off and yet retailer doesn't seem to understand that.

this is why knowing basic of market could help massively in determining what step to take, the paper hand amateur trader will always be the one that become exit liquidity because they are just that bad. they should've stayed with DCA.

It would not matter for Bitcoin because regardless of the retail investors not having interest to invest as they did in 2021, the institutional investors are still going to pump the market to get high price as they can because they want to make profits from their investments and when Bitcoin is going up is the only way they can get the profits. They might not care too much about altcoins because alot of them are not focus on investing in altcoins but Bitcoin. Some exchanges are trying to push altcoins to the faces of institutional investors because they are listing as many of them but still they are not getting the attention. Only memecoins had a very bullish period but it did not last. Until Bitcoin has reduced in market dominance, there is no need to invest in any altcoins yet but to keep waiting.

We cant compare some of the past outcome on market price and cryptocurrency entire networks as of then to what we are having now, it more better and appropriate if we can deal which each stages base of the economic conditions on ground, even though there is more to expect from the market this season and beyond, any little challenges felt from the economic and financial circumstance may not by this time have much impact on the value of the cryptos as we had during the covid years back.

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I also invested a little in altcoin and thought that making profit from it is as easy as previous cycles, but it is not. I realize that altcoins are having quite a hard time . Many people even predict that we will not have an altcoin season  , what do you think ?
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I think we will get an altcoin season but there's just SO MANY altcoins now and so many different narratives that it won't be as explosive as the last one. I hope I'm wrong of course!

With each Bitcoin market cycle, it has noise on media that helps to attract new people joining this market. New people mean newbies and many of them are retail investors.

Bitcoin bubble index can satisfy your curiosity.
https://www.coinglass.com/pro/i/bitcoinBubble

You can use Google trend too.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=bitcoin&hl=en

I don't really think that government stimulus contributed massively to the bull run last season. Statistics showed that most of the stimulus checks people received were spent on basic needs like food and other bills. Only a few percentage of these stimulus receivers invested from it. From these statistics, only 15% saved or invested.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/03/12/heres-how-americans-are-spending-those-coronavirus-stimulus-checks.html

I am not aware of research that has studied the behaviour of Bitcoin retail investors in the current circle, it would have been helpful. The focus this period has been on institutional investors but retailers are observing the market and taking advantage of available opportunities. But I think the most attractive altcoin investment now is telegram shitcoins. And most of them have proved to be worthless.    

This is not a chart of what is happening now and have you been following the market in recent months? Because if you follow the market closely, you will realize that most of the price increase is concentrated in bitcoin, only a few altcoins also have impressive growth. But with the recent correction, bitcoin has only lost nearly 30% of its value since ATH while many altcoins, especially shitcoins are seeing losses of up to 70%-80%  .  What is more ironic is that bitcoin price seems to have recovered above $60k but many altcoins have yet to see any significant recovery.

I also invested a little in altcoin and thought that making profit from it is as easy as previous cycles, but it is not. I realize that altcoins are having quite a hard time . Many people even predict that we will not have an altcoin season  , what do you think ?

The cycle before the last was a bigger pump and there was no locked wn boredom or stimulus. It may have been a added advantage but is not a determining factor for a bullrun.

One positive is that if we get less retail investors the drop from the next ATH will not be steep. They usually chase easy profits and make quick exits.

ahem

Mostly OG's dont put selling pressure on that market but yup if your OG = Institutional investment, yup they are gonna be the exit liquidity for the institutional investors, There are still 4 months to go for a new peak, From the beginning of this cycle my expectation by the end of 2024 was around 80k minimum and a 100k max, seems like its gonna be perfect speculation haha until now I'm pretty confident on it.

When I read the "licking their wounds" part, that cracked me up, the last cycle was fun for everyone I believe, only those who got in late came out with losses, but then, that's how it always is with every investment scheme and not just in crypto.
Although it also depends solely on the type of projectz the retails invested in in the last cycle, as I see that no just bitcoin, but a few number of Altcoins have also recovered and possibly touched or even past their all time high in the last cycle.

And coming back to the topic being discussed, retails are here already, but the issue is that, they are all focused on memecoin, majority of them are on telegram playing tap tap game to earn some free money instead of investing in the market, many of this guys are probably going to invest their money at some point, but like you said, I am also not expecting much for Altcoins in this coming season, though still worth taking a shot at some really good ones with great potentials.

I guess typical retail behaviour is to arrive late and be exit liquidity for the OGs!

We won’t see such an impact until after the current price cycle is over, as the rise in the price of Bitcoin and the increased potential to make money quickly and Bitcoin continuing to rise is what is driving more retail traders to join. Institutional investors have more market experience and better analysis than retail traders and therefore their investments will be mainly limited to 2024 and less in 2025.

I have a theory that retail may not ape in this cycle as much as they did in the last one.

Last bull run we had covid boredom (people sat at home with nothing to do) + a LOT of stimulus = a lot of new money flowing into crypto, especially alts.

This time we have the institutions of course, and I don't underestimate how big that could be for Bitcoin this cycle (although it could be more "slow and steady" than face-melting gains).

But it feels like retail are still licking their wounds from the last cycle and less likely to join the fun time round.

What do you think?

I think for BTC it doesn't really matter too much, but for alts we might not see the kind of returns everyone's expecting.