Here’s What’s Behind the Recent Crypto Crash, According to Economist Alex Krüger

Economist Alex Krüger is laying out what he thinks are the top reasons for the latest Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto market correction.

Krüger shares with his 167,000 followers on the social media platform X his four main reasons why digital assets are down over the last week.

“Reasons for the crash, in order of importance

(for those who need them)

#1 Too much leverage (funding matters)
#2 ETH driving market south (market decided ETF not passing)
#3 Negative BTC ETF inflows (careful, data is T+1)
#4 Solana sh*tcoin mania (it went too far)…

I was expecting this correction. Was expecting it in April not now.”

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT recently reported that over $122 million worth of Solana (SOL was raised by various altcoin projects in the span of one week, most of it for memecoins.

At time of writing, Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL) have all corrected significantly off their yearly highs.

In a new interview on the 1000x Podcast, Krüger elaborates on the inner workings of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and explains why he believes it’s still the early days for the Bitcoin bull market.

“The reason why we’re early is that the institutional sales machine is not yet fully deployed. According to some estimates, it’s deployed up to 20% only, and they’re looking to ramp it up big time into year-end.

What does that mean, the sales machine?

If we think about it, like how does the plumbing work on the ETF side? You have ETF buyers, [which] are retail and discount platforms. You have institutional guys, and you have wealth advisors.

The wealth advisors, they are divided into basically two or three tranches, depending on how you look at it. You have what is called the wirehouses: Merrill Lynch, UBS, Morgan Stanley and those guys.

And then you have the RIAs (registered investment advisors), which then are split into the independent ones and the non-independent ones. The non-independent ones are Edward Jones, and Wells Fargo advisors.

What happens there is that these guys, they’re very slow in starting to promote an ETF to their people. They need to see a track record, they need to see minimum AUM (assets under management), they need time. It needs to get approved.

We’ve seen headlines… in the last two weeks of Merill Lynch and UBS. They’re saying they will start offering the ETF to their clients.

This is just starting. We’re very far off on the wirehouse side, for basically the entire institutional sales machinery to be in…