Bitcoin’s muted performance, despite heavy institutional adoption of blockchain, reflects a market facing three separate headwinds: more options selling by large investors, a rotation of capital into artificial intelligence, and delays in U.S. crypto legislation.
That is the view of Maxime Seiler, CEO of STS Digital, who says the industry’s long-term infrastructure story is improving even if token prices are not fully reflecting it yet.
What is weighing on crypto now
Seiler’s argument is that the market is being pulled in different directions. On one side, banks, exchanges and brokers are adopting blockchain to make financial markets operate around the clock. On the other, much of the benefit is flowing to established firms rather than directly to crypto assets.
He also pointed to two forces outside crypto itself:
- Artificial intelligence investment is attracting attention and capital that might otherwise have gone into digital assets.
- U.S. regulatory delay, including slow movement on market structure bills such as the Clarity Act, is leaving investors without the policy clarity they want.
According to Seiler, clearer rules would not just help sentiment. They could also speed up the shift toward 24/7 trading and settlement in traditional finance, which is one of the practical changes blockchain is enabling.
Why options selling matters
Seiler said the rapid growth of the institutional crypto options market is also changing price behavior. Options are contracts that give traders the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an asset at a set price. When large institutions sell those contracts, they collect premiums in exchange for taking on volatility risk.
That activity can compress bitcoin’s price swings. Seiler described a feedback loop in which more volatility selling leads to lower expected volatility, which in turn encourages more of the same trade.
He said bitcoin’s implied volatility — a measure of the market’s expectation for future price movement — has been unusually subdued. The result, in his view, is a tighter trading range and fewer of the sharp rallies that defined earlier crypto cycles.
The bigger picture for market structure
Seiler said the financial industry is increasingly using blockchain to upgrade existing systems rather than to build a separate crypto economy. That distinction matters for investors: adoption of the underlying technology does not always translate into higher token prices.
He also noted that companies such as Kraken and Coinbase are extending beyond pure crypto services as they broaden into wider financial offerings.
At STS Digital, Seiler said the company has expanded alongside that institutional shift. The Bermuda-regulated crypto options market maker received a full Class F license this year, and he said its bitcoin option notional volumes have quadrupled over the past 12 months.
What would support the next move higher
Seiler said a meaningful crypto rally would likely require several conditions to line up:
- Regulatory clarity in the U.S.
- Broader institutional use of 24/7 market infrastructure
- A more supportive macro environment, potentially including lower interest rates or renewed monetary easing
He does not expect those catalysts to arrive in the next few months. But he argued that markets may be underestimating both the pace of institutional adoption and how quickly traditional finance is integrating crypto infrastructure.
The takeaway is less about a near-term breakout than about timing. In Seiler’s view, crypto may already be advancing in the background through infrastructure adoption, even if prices need better policy and macro conditions before the next sustained bull run can begin.