When bitcoin was first created it was made to restore freedoms back to people. Low fee transactions anywhere in the world, lightening fast (well kind of, about 10 minutes as that's how long a block takes to mine on bitcoin) It was also a way to store value as a hedge vs bail outs, inflation and all the other shaddy crap that still happens to this day that is making wealth inequality even greater.
While it did well and crypto ended up pushing to around $50,000 there was a shift in the last bear market where bitcoin dipped all the way back down to $16,000 at one point. That shift was a call for stronger adoption and while yes that would mean more access to money and wealth it also meant it would pretty much be letting go of everything it stood for.
While there are still many pros to earning, owning and holding bitcoin in your own wallet there's been increasing demands of people wanting to place it into "banks" or "ETFs" which means that person is never really in full control of their assets and instead is trusting the bank or company to hold those funds and allow you access to them at any time.
It's a big risk but it's even bigger when you start to look at ETFs.
While ETFs for sure will bring in more volume to bitcoin it also is making it so that companies once again hold a bulk of the wealth while giving you pretty much nothing in return other than a digital IOU slip of paper. It's a weird thing but for some reason it's what most wealth and a bulk of people will fall back on all the time.
While this hasn't given crypto a bad rep it's for sure given the way people are going about getting involved with crypto a bad rep. It's a toss in the face to everything it was built for. However people are going to people and do whatever they want to do.
Massive Wealth To Enter
Many thought that once we got ETFs that a massive flood of money would flow into them skyrocketing bitcoin to new highs. The funny part is even to this day the market cap of all of crypto is still LOWER than it was without ETFs.
This shows us two things.
The first that we are not in a true bull market yet and the second that there's actully trillions of dollars sitting around that has the potential now of entering these systems.
The reasons why we most likely haven't been seeing this happen is because there are a lot of very low risk investments right now that are paying rather well. Savings, stocks, bonds are all performing very well while crypto is still seen as a very risky asset and well people with money look for the biggest returns with the least amount of risk. So for them to turn towards crypto again is going to have to mean two things. There's really no more safe money to be made so they need to diversify more and the barrier to enter is no longer there.
Both of these things look like they will be happening as we roll into 2025 and the November fed rate is going to most likely tell us a good amount of data. Before many were thinking we would maybe have another 25 point cut but from what I'm seeing in terms of bank interest rates being slashed lately we could be in for another 50 point rate cut.
The other part of this is that those with large amounts of money still have a very hard time or simply can't buy bitcoin with their funds. This is because wirehouses and the systems they use to house their money still have not really opened up the faucets wide or allowed everyone to take part in it yet.
IDK about you but if I had large sums of money the last thing I would want is some government telling me what I can and can't invest in which is exactly what happens and exactly why bitcoin was created in the first place.
Out of all of it though 2025 is shaping up so far to have the right parts to make bitcoin and I also believe Eethereum see some big plays again. I believe altcoins could continue to struggle depending on the election results in November. Without clarity and allowed adoption I see the case of Bitcoin and Ethereum doing well but altcoins still hovering in this unknown sector.