Bitcoin Parabolic Rally Still Possible

Bull Case Intact Despite Slowing Capital Efficiency

Bitcoin's ($BTC) long-term bull thesis remains intact, according to Ki Young Ju, founder and CEO of on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant, even as the market grapples with declining capital efficiency and sustained selling pressure from early holders.

Ki argues that the current distribution phase is not a sign of structural failure, but rather a broad transfer of supply from long-term Bitcoin holders and miners to US financial institutions and spot ETFs. Ki Young Ju has described Bitcoin's current distribution phase as a major transfer of supply from old market participants to US financial institutions, ETFs, and new long-term holders, arguing that selling by Bitcoin OGs and long-time miners is part of a broad change of hands rather than evidence that the asset has exhausted its cycle.

The scale of institutional absorption underpins his confidence. Since January 2023, Strategy has bought 711,206 BTC and sold only 32 BTC, while ETFs absorbed a further 509,102 BTC between March 2024 and mid-2025, bringing combined absorption to roughly 1,240,808 BTC, yet price returned to near the same level.

Institutional Depth, Not Retail Demand, Is the Key Trigger

For Ki, the next major rally will not be driven by the same retail-led ETF demand that characterized earlier phases of the current cycle. Instead, he argues that the composition of holders matters more than the raw volume of capital entering the market.

If the new owners are institutions capable of attracting larger pools of liquidity over time, he argues, the transition could ultimately support another upward cycle, noting that "for any asset, what ultimately matters is who holds it."

Ki estimates that Bitcoin could enter another parabolic phase if it absorbs more than $1 trillion in realized capital. That threshold has already been approached. Bitcoin's realized capitalization reached an all-time high of $1.125 trillion as of late 2025, a metric that values each bitcoin at the price it last moved, highlighting actual capital inflows rather than speculative price action.

Ki also pointed to gold's roughly $27 trillion market value as a long-run benchmark, suggesting significant room remains for Bitcoin to grow if institutional adoption deepens. As Bitcoin matures, its price behavior is diverging from previous cycles, with the asset reaching an all-time high market cap of approximately $2.5 trillion as of October 2025, making it significantly larger in scale and more liquid than before.

The picture is not without risk. CryptoQuant data shows overall Bitcoin demand, including speculative and spot demand, contracting at a monthly pace of roughly 232,000 BTC, with analysts arguing the correction is tied directly to demand conditions rather than equities or broader macro indicators. Ki himself has warned that a prolonged sideways market, rather than a sharp crash, could prove the harder test for the current cycle's structural supports.

Sources
Bitcoin's Great Wealth Transfer May Fuel Next Rally, Says CryptoQuant CEO (NewsBTC via TradingView)
Bitcoin's Realized Cap Holds at Record High Over $1 Trillion (CoinDesk)
Is Bitcoin's Four-Year Cycle Over? (Fidelity Digital Assets)