Recently, the CEO of the cryptocurrency investment firm Keyrock made an interesting observation: he claims that the current Bitcoin price is set far below its actual value. In a situation where macro uncertainty is increasing and progress is being made with institutional investors, logically the price should be much higher—but it is still being treated as a risk asset.

Bitcoin is currently trading around $71,470. It has plunged from last year’s peak of $126,080 in October and is down about 18% so far this year. But what’s worth paying attention to here is not the price movement itself, but the change in market sentiment. Institutional capital has flowed in on a large scale, but the nature of that capital has shifted from being ideological to being tactical. In other words, during periods of severe stress, it is the kind of asset that gets pulled out first.

What’s interesting is what comes next. The market appears to be splitting into two flows that are almost uncorrelated. The first is the crypto-native ecosystem—namely the DeFi and altcoin markets. In this area, investor sentiment is being suppressed, and it has become harder to see broad speculative rallies like in the past. Instead, it says that “highly precise and rational opportunities” are emerging.

The second is the digitization of traditional finance. Things like tokenized money market funds, stablecoins, and on-chain funds. Here, it says that institutional enthusiasm has not yet cooled down. Development speed hasn’t slowed either, and the objectives are clear. It is about making cryptocurrencies easier for clients to access and reshaping parts of the financial markets.

However, there is an important gap here. Assets have already been tokenized, but the utility layer is still under construction. This means that although tokens exist, basic questions are still unanswered—such as where they can be used, who accepts them, and whether they can be used as collateral. It takes time to serve as a bridge between traditional institutions and on-chain markets while also creating large-scale liquidity.

So the CEO sees 2026 as a “year of transition.” While many elements that defined past cycles are disappearing, the actually meaningful parts—like real finance moving onto the blockchain—are still being built. The true turning point, he expects, will be between 2027 and 2028. Since traditional capital markets are much larger than the cryptocurrency market, the logic is that even moving a small share on-chain could surpass previous all-time highs.

In the end, this is not a price-driven boom, but a structural change centered on infrastructure. The foundation is being laid, but the scale has not yet arrived. So while today’s price movement may seem somewhat uninteresting, the quiet building of a digital-native financial system is viewed as far more significant. That’s because once regulatory clarity comes out, large-scale institutional investment will become possible.