Recently, many people have been discussing ETH's performance issues. Compared to the same period's BTC, BNB, and SOL gains, ETH indeed appears dull. There is a often overlooked factor behind this—the distribution of chips.

After the implementation of the PoS mechanism, ETH attracted a large number of retail investors. At first glance, the popularity seems high, but from the perspective of the big players: the more dispersed the chips, the higher the cost to manipulate the market. Imagine having to make hundreds of thousands of small retail investors profit—who would want to do that? The shares held by millions of shareholders in A-shares are textbook examples—markets with too many retail investors are simply not attractive to institutions.

This is not to say ETH is bad, but rather that market structure determines the growth ceiling. In such an environment, investors need to be more cautious in their choices, avoiding assets with dispersed chips and retail crowding to find real opportunities.