Many people have heard of the 21 million cap for Bitcoin, which is hardcoded and unchangeable. But the real issue is—these 21 million coins will never be fully mined. The mining reward halves every four years, and in the later stages, miners have to put in enormous effort to mine just a fraction of a coin, or even less. This situation is like using a cannon to kill a mosquito; the cost-to-reward ratio becomes increasingly absurd.

Satoshi Nakamoto's original idea was quite pure—turn Bitcoin into "digital gold," using scarcity to counteract the excessive issuance of traditional fiat currencies. But the actual development trajectory has completely deviated from this original intention.

The most obvious change is that Bitcoin has shifted from "open to everyone" to "the strong get stronger." Miners, to continue making profits, can only rely on on-chain transaction fees in the end. The problem is that the total daily fee income of the entire Bitcoin network is simply not enough to cover the massive electricity costs of global miners. Miners are like people doing subtraction in a marathon with no finish line; no one knows who will be able to persist until the end.

Beyond the cost competition dilemma, the power landscape of the Bitcoin market has also undergone a fundamental reshuffle. Major global institutions have gained influence through financial tools like ETFs and large-scale coin hoarding, while retail investors can only follow passively. The three largest mining pools almost monopolize the entire network hash rate, turning free competition into a game of whales. Any small movement can directly shake the coin price, and ordinary investors have long lost the chance to turn things around through technology or luck. They can only go with the flow amid emotional fluctuations in the secondary market.

Bitcoin is no longer the grassroots financial experiment full of "underdog counterattacks," but has become a pawn in the hands of a few capital players.