Exchange monopoly, Wall Street harvesting, and the desperate situation of retail investors

Honestly, the 1011 Black Swan event has made me, a previously optimistic industry observer, feel a tinge of despair. I used to understand the current "Three Kingdoms" situation in the crypto industry, thinking it was a battle of titans, with retail investors reaping the rewards. But after experiencing this bloodbath, I've unraveled the underlying logic and discovered that this isn't the case. To put it bluntly, I used to believe that the tech community was innovating, exchanges were generating traffic, and Wall Street was deploying capital. Each of these three parties was playing their own game. As retail investors, we just had to seize the opportunity, follow the wave of technological innovation, capitalize on emerging trends, and rush in when funds entered the market, and we'd always get a piece of the action. But after experiencing the 1011 bloodbath, I suddenly realized that perhaps these three parties weren't competing in an orderly manner at all, but were instead reaping the benefits of all liquidity in the market. The first force: exchanges monopolize traffic, acting like vampires who control both traffic and liquidity pools. Honestly, I used to believe exchanges were solely focused on expanding their platforms, increasing traffic, and expanding their ecosystems to profit from the shovels. However, the USDe cross-margin liquidation incident exposed the powerlessness of retail investors within the rules defined by exchange platforms. The leverage levels and shady risk management practices employed by platforms to enhance product and service experience are actually traps for retail investors. Various rebate programs, Alpha and MEME launch pads, various revolving loans, and highly leveraged contract mechanics are constantly emerging. While these seemingly offer retail investors numerous opportunities to profit, if exchanges can't mitigate the risk of on-chain DeFi liquidations, retail investors will suffer as well. Life is like that. What's particularly frightening is that the top 10 exchanges generated $21.6 trillion in trading volume in Q2, yet overall market liquidity is still declining. Where did the money go? Besides transaction fees, there's also various liquidations. Who's draining the liquidity? The second force: Wall Street capital, cloaked in compliance, is entering the market to stake out territory. I had been eagerly anticipating Wall Street's entry, believing that institutional capital would bring greater stability to the market. After all, institutions are long-term investors, bringing incremental capital to the market, allowing us to reap the benefits of crypto-tradfi integration. However, before this recent plunge, we saw news of whales profiting from precise short selling. Several wallets suspected of being Wall Street-linked initiated massive airdrop positions, earning hundreds of millions in profits. There's a lot of similar news, and it reads like insider information, but happening in this moment of panic, one has to wonder: why do institutions always manage to gain the advantage of "front-loading" transactions before black swan events occur? These TradFi institutions, under the guise of compliance and bringing in capital, are actually doing what? Using stablecoin public chains to tie up the DeFi ecosystem, using ETF channels to control capital flows, and using various financial instruments to gradually erode the market's voice? On the surface, they claim to be doing this for industry development, but what's the reality? There are too many conspiracy theories about the Trump family's wealth to elaborate on. The third force: tech natives + retail developers, caught in a crossfire. I think this is where most retail investors, developers, and so-called builders in the market are truly despairing. Since last year, people have been saying that many altcoins have been brought down, but this time, the direct drop to zero forces us to see the reality: liquidity for many altcoins has almost dried up. The key is that infra technical debt is piling up, application rollouts are falling short of expectations, and developers are painstakingly building, but what's the result? The market simply isn't buying in. Therefore, I can't see how the altcoin market will rebound. I don't understand how these altcoin projects will seize liquidity from exchanges, or how they'll compete with Wall Street institutions in terms of market manipulation. If the market doesn't buy into the narrative, if all that remains is the so-called MEME gamble, then the altcoin market will be a decisive sell-off and reshuffle. Developers will flee, and market participants will undergo a structured reshuffle. Will the market ultimately come to nothing? Ugh, it's too difficult! So... There's nothing to say, but tears well up. If the crypto industry's chaotic Three Kingdoms situation continues, with exchanges monopolizing the market, Wall Street profiting, and retail investors and technical experts facing a double blow, this will be a catastrophic blow to the cyclical nature of crypto trading. If this continues, the market will only be left with a few short-term winners and a long-term loser.