Are retail investors not buying BTC anymore? The proportion of small Bitcoin transactions on-chain reaches a two-and-a-half-year low.

On-chain statistics show that the proportion of Bitcoin transactions under $10,000 has dropped to 0.6%, sparking community discussions on the movement of retail funds. (Background: How to capture the 'last penny' of a bull market? Analyst: Buy the dip in September, gradually cash out in Q4) (Context: ChatGPT analyzes the timing of crypto market corrections: Is it a 'halftime' in the bull market?) According to a Reddit post today (24th) on the Bitcoin discussion board, on-chain data indicates that Bitcoin transactions under $10,000 now account for only 0.6% of total trading volume, reaching its lowest point since mid-2022, and is significantly lower than the 2.7% at the beginning of the 2023 bull market. In dollar terms, while there is still over $400 million in daily transactions, the relative proportion has declined and is almost negligible compared to the overall market, raising questions about whether 'retail investors are absent'. The last time retail demand fell so sharply was at the end of the 2021 bull market. So, what do you think—has this cycle peaked? Or are we just waiting for the next wave of retail 'fear of missing out' (FOMO)? Community perspective: Have retail investors really 'exited'? In response, a netizen RoyYourWorkingBoy commented on the post: 'Retail investors haven’t left; they are just holding through ETFs or MicroStrategy (MSTR), no longer throwing $500 into cold wallets, but buying IBIT stocks.' This viewpoint suggests that the launch of crypto ETFs has caused retail buying to 'move off-chain', leading to an underestimation of actual demand in on-chain statistics. On the other hand, fund capital is settled internally within custodial institutions and cannot be broken down into individual small transactions. Additionally, when new users enter the cryptocurrency market, current centralized exchanges provide a very smooth purchasing experience, so there are indeed not many users who will conduct transactions on-chain. In other words, the low proportion of 0.6% may be a result of multiple overlapping factors, rather than simply indicating that retail investors are unwilling to buy Bitcoin. Follow-up observations: From 2.7% to 0.6%, while the surface numbers seem bleak, the discussion itself reminds investors that on-chain indicators are just one of many observation windows. Retail funds may not have disappeared; they have just shifted to more convenient or cost-effective vehicles. If investors want to discern the trend, they must incorporate more layers of analytical data to verify whether retail momentum is truly fading or just changing tracks?