Bitcoin Investors: When Everyone’s an Institution but the Koreans Have Gone Fishing 🎣

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There is a kind of weariness that settles upon the observer of markets, like the cold that seeps through the windows of a gulag barrack. One becomes used to absurdity: today, Bitcoin, that precious digital mirage, has ascended past $103,000. It is said to be a 0.4% decrease today, a month’s misery still tallying at over 20%. Such leaps and plummets would thrill anyone—except perhaps those relegated to watching from the frozen margins.

Our wise analyst, Avocado Onchain—a name surely destined for immortalization in the memoirs alongside Shakespeare and the prison cook—delivers a revelation that regional markets now stumble in the footprints of global ones. The “Korea Premium,” once a proud banner of local delirium, is shrinking. Imagine: in 2017 and 2021, the Korean market paid extra for its Bitcoin, up to 20%. That level of retail euphoria, which used to announce bull markets with the subtlety of a marching band, has waned. Now, a 10% bump is enough to make even the bravest trader spill his instant noodles.

Why? The answer lies deep within the cells of the institutional monolith. Spot Bitcoin ETFs, American corporations, even mysterious sovereign funds—these are the new wardens of price. The wild-eyed Korean retail investor, famed for his speculative frenzy, has been replaced by men (and women, presumably) in suits, brandishing spreadsheets instead of lottery tickets. Surely this is progress. Or perhaps, simply, another evolution in the eternal labor camp of economic hope.

Now, movement in Bitcoin’s price arises not from the shoving crowd at Korean exchanges but from silent boardrooms half a world away. The old signals—the clamorous activity of the Korea Premium—no longer hold their predictive magic. No doubt somewhere, a trader weeps quietly into his kimchi.

If the market truly matures, as Avocado declares, perhaps there is less cause for uproar, fewer nights spent feverish and awake counting satoshis like stolen potatoes. But let us not celebrate too soon. For in this new regime, the shackles are simply shinier. Bitcoiners await their next hope in line, watching the charts and the shadowy flows of institutional money, all while remembering when the market’s madness was, at least, more democratic.

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2025-05-15 08:47