Recently, I saw an interesting viewpoint on YouTube, so I will briefly record and organize it:

Japan may soon enter an interest rate hike cycle.
For the past decade or so, Japanese banks have maintained a zero interest rate or even negative interest rates.
This makes the "cost" of Japanese funds very low.

The essence of finance is to borrow money at a low cost and invest it in high-yield assets to earn interest rate spreads.

In such an environment, Wall Street and various institutions have borrowed large sums of money from Japan at extremely low interest rates over the past decade, and then invested these funds into global high-yield markets—including US stocks, the bond market, real estate, and the cryptocurrency space that we are familiar with.

Therefore, the strong upward trend in the U.S. stock market and the crypto market in recent years has been partly driven by "Yen carry trade funds".

But now, Japan is going to raise interest rates.

Once interest rates rise, the cost of financing in yen increases, reducing the arbitrage opportunities and making it even unprofitable. As a result, funds that were previously "working abroad to earn money" may be forced to flow back.
As a result, the liquidity in both the US stock market and the cryptocurrency market will decrease, and the market will naturally be more prone to decline in the absence of funds.

If this viewpoint holds, then from a long-term perspective, there may still be a prolonged bear market.

Yesterday, ETH dropped from $3000 to over $2700, falling by 10% in one go, seemingly sending a signal to the market: the outlook may not be so optimistic in the near future.