Have you noticed a very surreal phenomenon? After this round of the market started to run, many people around me are complaining about the same thing— they see the right direction, Bitcoin also rises, but the numbers in their accounts just stay still.

It's not about losing money, but that frustrating feeling of "I clearly made the right bet, so why haven't I made any profit?" Looking bullish on BTC, right? ETH, mainstream public chains, AI concepts, L2, DeFi—these sectors have indeed taken off. But here’s the problem: when BTC surges, SOL skyrockets, and the market keeps climbing green all the way up, the few coins in your wallet either stay still or even dip, with numbers not much different from the bear market.

This ecosystem has long gone awry. Retail investors are surrounded by VC firms holding early-stage chips, market makers controlling liquidity, quantitative robots rushing to discover prices, MEV bots siphoning profits, and whale harvesting studios harvesting in bulk. By the time this information reaches retail investors, it’s basically the last straw. The old pattern of "waiting for halving → chasing Bitcoin → entering the altcoin season" no longer works; the rhythm is cut into fast, fragmented pieces, all institutionalized gameplay.

So most retail investors are stuck in a very awkward position: just holding BTC and ETH, feeling the returns are too slow; researching on-chain data and algorithm strategies, but lacking the time and mental energy; trying to gamble on VC coins or MEME coins, but afraid of being the last fool to enter. Above are institutions crushing you with efficiency, below are gamblers frightening you with volatility, and people are simply caught in a dilemma, unable to move forward or backward.

Honestly, there are only two paths for retail investors now: either wait for a truly "consensus-level" asset to emerge, hoping to catch a token that can cycle through like BTC and ETH did; or simply accept the situation, just holding onto Bitcoin and lying flat, letting the market do whatever it wants, at least avoiding daily mental breakdowns caused by stories of sudden wealth.