The crypto industry is facing a "Triple Play" dilemma. The game between exchanges, Wall Street, and retail technical traders is leading to depleted market liquidity, with retail investors becoming the biggest casualties.

* Exchange Monopoly Flow: The top ten exchanges have massive trading volume, but overall market liquidity continues to decline. Platforms attract retail users with high leverage, rebate activities, and complex financial products, yet are powerless to withstand on-chain liquidations when risks erupt, leading to significant shrinkage of user assets.

* Wall Street Capital Faction: Institutions enter under the guise of compliance but repeatedly profit from precise short positions right before black swan events. They gradually erode market influence using tools like stablecoins and ETFs, making it difficult for retail investors to get a fair trading environment.

* Technical Native Faction & Retail Investors: Developers and altcoin projects face dried-up liquidity. Infrastructure is imperfect, and application implementation is difficult. Struggling to survive under the dual pressure from exchanges and Wall Street, the market is caught in a vicious cycle.

If the current situation persists, the crypto market might only have short-term winners, while long-term participants face a comprehensive wipeout.

Summary / Expand

Author: Haotian

To be honest, the recent black swan event on 1011 made me, originally an optimistic industry observer, feel a hint of despair.

I had previously understood the current "Triple Play" situation in the crypto industry, thinking that while the big players fight, retail could still get some scraps. But after this bloodbath, dissecting the underlying logic, I found that's not the case.

Frankly, I originally thought the tech folks were driving innovation, the exchanges were building traffic, and Wall Street was deploying capital – three parties doing their own thing. We retail investors just needed to time it right: follow the wave during tech innovation, catch the hype when it comes, and jump in when capital flows in, always managing to get some soup.

However, after experiencing the 1011 bloodbath, I suddenly realized: perhaps these three parties aren't competing in an orderly fashion at all, but are ultimately harvesting all the liquidity left in the market?

The First Force: The Exchange Monopoly Flow - Vampires Holding Traffic and Liquidity Pools.

Honestly, I always thought exchanges just wanted to build bigger platforms, more traffic, larger ecosystems, earning the "shovel money." But the incident of USDe cross-margin triggering serial liquidations exposed the powerlessness of retail under the platform-defined rules of exchanges. The increased leverage levels, ostensibly to enhance product service experience, and the obscure risk control capabilities in the shadows are essentially traps for retail.

Various rebate activities, Alpha and MEME launchpads, various recurring loan理财产品, and high-leverage contract玩法 emerge one after another. They seem to offer retail more money-making opportunities, but once exchanges can't handle the risk of on-chain DeFi serial liquidations, retail gets dragged down with them. Ah, life.

What's truly terrifying upon reflection: the top 10 exchanges had a Q2 trading volume of $21.6 trillion, yet overall market liquidity is still declining. Where did the money go? Besides fees, there are also the various liquidations. Who exactly is sucking away the liquidity?

The Second Force: The Wall Street Capital Faction - Enclosing Land Dressed in Compliance Clothes.

I was initially particularly hopeful about Wall Street's entry, thinking institutional money would bring greater stability to the market. After all, institutions are long-term players, they could bring incremental injections into the market, and we could enjoy the industry红利 of Crypto merging with TradFi.

But right before this crash, we again saw news of whales making precise short profits – before the plunge, several wallets suspected to be Wall Street structures opened huge short positions, profiting hundreds of millions. Similar news is plentiful, reading like insider information, but happening at such panic-inducing times, one can't help but suspect: why do institutions always seem to have the advantage of "front-running" before black swan events occur?

These TradFi institutions, entering under the banner of compliance and bringing capital, what are they actually doing? Using stablecoin public chains to bind the DeFi ecosystem? Using ETF channels to control capital flow? Using various financial instruments to gradually蚕食 this market's discourse power? Superficially they say it's for industry development, but in reality? I won't elaborate on the many conspiracy theories about the Trump family profiteering.

The Third Force: The Technical Native Faction + Retail Developers - Cannon Fodder Under Siege.

I think this is where the true despair lies for most retail investors and developers in the market, the so-called builders. Since last year, people have been saying many altcoins were beaten down, but this time they were directly pierced to zero, forcing one to see the reality: the liquidity of many altcoins is almost completely dried up.

The key is, there's a pile of infra technical debt, application implementation falls short of expectations, developers work hard building, and the result? The market simply doesn't buy it.

So, I can't see how the altcoin market will make a comeback from this. I don't understand how these altcoin projects are supposed to wrest liquidity from the exchanges' hands, or how they are supposed to compete with Wall Street institutions in pumping power? If the market no longer buys into storytelling narratives, if the market is left only with所谓的 MEME gambling, for the altcoin market, this is a decisive clearing and reshuffle. Developers flee, industry participants undergo structural shuffling. Must the market return to nothingness? Sigh, it's just too hard!

So...

Too much talk, all tears. If the crypto industry's "Triple Play" situation continues – exchanges monopolizing and blood-sucking, Wall Street harvesting precisely, retail and technical factions being double-teamed – it absolutely spells doom for the cyclical玩法 of past Crypto eras.

If this continues long-term, the market will be left with only short-term少数赢家和长期的全部输家 (a few short-term winners and all long-term losers).

The crypto industry is facing a "Triple Play" dilemma. The game between exchanges, Wall Street, and retail technical traders is leading to depleted market liquidity, with retail investors becoming the biggest casualties.

* Exchange Monopoly Flow: The top ten exchanges have massive trading volume, but overall market liquidity continues to decline. Platforms attract retail users with high leverage, rebate activities, and complex financial products, yet are powerless to withstand on-chain liquidations when risks erupt, leading to significant shrinkage of user assets.

* Wall Street Capital Faction: Institutions enter under the guise of compliance but repeatedly profit from precise short positions right before black swan events. They gradually erode market influence using tools like stablecoins and ETFs, making it difficult for retail investors to get a fair trading environment.

* Technical Native Faction & Retail Investors: Developers and altcoin projects face dried-up liquidity. Infrastructure is imperfect, and application implementation is difficult. Struggling to survive under the dual pressure from exchanges and Wall Street, the market is caught in a vicious cycle.

If the current situation persists, the crypto market might only have short-term winners, while long-term participants face a comprehensive wipeout.

Summary / Expand

Author: Haotian

To be honest, the recent black swan event on 1011 made me, originally an optimistic industry observer, feel a hint of despair.

I had previously understood the current "Triple Play" situation in the crypto industry, thinking that while the big players fight, retail could still get some scraps. But after this bloodbath, dissecting the underlying logic, I found that's not the case.

Frankly, I originally thought the tech folks were driving innovation, the exchanges were building traffic, and Wall Street was deploying capital – three parties doing their own thing. We retail investors just needed to time it right: follow the wave during tech innovation, catch the hype when it comes, and jump in when capital flows in, always managing to get some soup.

However, after experiencing the 1011 bloodbath, I suddenly realized: perhaps these three parties aren't competing in an orderly fashion at all, but are ultimately harvesting all the liquidity left in the market?

The First Force: The Exchange Monopoly Flow - Vampires Holding Traffic and Liquidity Pools.

Honestly, I always thought exchanges just wanted to build bigger platforms, more traffic, larger ecosystems, earning the "shovel money." But the incident of USDe cross-margin triggering serial liquidations exposed the powerlessness of retail under the platform-defined rules of exchanges. The increased leverage levels, ostensibly to enhance product service experience, and the obscure risk control capabilities in the shadows are essentially traps for retail.

Various rebate activities, Alpha and MEME launchpads, various recurring loan理财产品, and high-leverage contract玩法 emerge one after another. They seem to offer retail more money-making opportunities, but once exchanges can't handle the risk of on-chain DeFi serial liquidations, retail gets dragged down with them. Ah, life.

What's truly terrifying upon reflection: the top 10 exchanges had a Q2 trading volume of $21.6 trillion, yet overall market liquidity is still declining. Where did the money go? Besides fees, there are also the various liquidations. Who exactly is sucking away the liquidity?

The Second Force: The Wall Street Capital Faction - Enclosing Land Dressed in Compliance Clothes.

I was initially particularly hopeful about Wall Street's entry, thinking institutional money would bring greater stability to the market. After all, institutions are long-term players, they could bring incremental injections into the market, and we could enjoy the industry红利 of Crypto merging with TradFi.

But right before this crash, we again saw news of whales making precise short profits – before the plunge, several wallets suspected to be Wall Street structures opened huge short positions, profiting hundreds of millions. Similar news is plentiful, reading like insider information, but happening at such panic-inducing times, one can't help but suspect: why do institutions always seem to have the advantage of "front-running" before black swan events occur?

These TradFi institutions, entering under the banner of compliance and bringing capital, what are they actually doing? Using stablecoin public chains to bind the DeFi ecosystem? Using ETF channels to control capital flow? Using various financial instruments to gradually蚕食 this market's discourse power? Superficially they say it's for industry development, but in reality? I won't elaborate on the many conspiracy theories about the Trump family profiteering.

The Third Force: The Technical Native Faction + Retail Developers - Cannon Fodder Under Siege.

I think this is where the true despair lies for most retail investors and developers in the market, the so-called builders. Since last year, people have been saying many altcoins were beaten down, but this time they were directly pierced to zero, forcing one to see the reality: the liquidity of many altcoins is almost completely dried up.

The key is, there's a pile of infra technical debt, application implementation falls short of expectations, developers work hard building, and the result? The market simply doesn't buy it.

So, I can't see how the altcoin market will make a comeback from this. I don't understand how these altcoin projects are supposed to wrest liquidity from the exchanges' hands, or how they are supposed to compete with Wall Street institutions in pumping power? If the market no longer buys into storytelling narratives, if the market is left only with所谓的 MEME gambling, for the altcoin market, this is a decisive clearing and reshuffle. Developers flee, industry participants undergo structural shuffling. Must the market return to nothingness? Sigh, it's just too hard!

So...

Too much talk, all tears. If the crypto industry's "Triple Play" situation continues – exchanges monopolizing and blood-sucking, Wall Street harvesting precisely, retail and technical factions being double-teamed – it absolutely spells doom for the cyclical玩法 of past Crypto eras.

If this continues long-term, the market will be left with only short-term少数赢家和长期的全部输家 (a few short-term winners and all long-term losers).