Bitcoin (BTC) is trading around $73,000 - down roughly 18% year-to-date and 42% below its all-time high of approximately $125,000 reached in October - and Keyrock CEO Kevin de Patoul cannot fully explain why.
In his view, the macro and institutional conditions that accumulated over the past 18 months should have pushed the price higher, not lower.
The disconnect, he argues, reflects a structural problem: Bitcoin is still behaving as a risk-on asset rather than the macro hedge its proponents claim it to be, and institutional capital in the space remains tactical rather than ideological.
What Keyrock Is Seeing
De Patoul, who co-founded Keyrock in 2017 as a crypto market maker now active across 85 exchanges, told CoinDesk that 2026 feels less like a breakout cycle and more like a "rewiring" phase.
The firm works with banks, asset managers, issuers, and exchanges - giving it direct visibility into institutional flows.
"It's still priced as a risk-on asset," he said. "Last in, first out in terms of capital allocation. If investors perceive it that way, then in periods of stress they reduce exposure."
He describes two largely uncorrelated markets operating in parallel. The first is the crypto-native ecosystem - DeFi, altcoins, speculative liquidity - where broad-based rallies have stalled and "very precise opportunities" have replaced them.
The second is the quiet digitization of traditional finance: tokenized money market funds, stablecoins, and settlement infrastructure, where institutional enthusiasm has not wavered.
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Why 2027–2028 Could Be Different
The problem, de Patoul said, is that the tokenization layer has been built ahead of its usefulness. Tokenized funds exist, but thin secondary liquidity, limited collateral acceptance, and incomplete bridges to traditional capital pools mean the tokens "function as wrappers rather than transformative instruments."
"They've built the token," he said. "Now the question is: where can it be used? Who accepts it? Can it be used as collateral? Can it bring liquidity at scale?"
He sees 2027 and 2028 as the real inflection point - when tokenized real-world assets could approach the total size of the entire previous crypto cycle peak. Traditional capital markets are orders of magnitude larger than crypto; even a small migration onchain could be transformative.
Regulatory timing remains a constraint. De Patoul called the CLARITY Act a "yellow flag," warning that a two-year delay would have a "meaningful impact" on institutions waiting for legal certainty before deploying capital at scale.