Totally agree. What a bear market truly tests isn’t just whether you have Alpha, but whether you have a strong enough capital structure to actually realize that Alpha and keep it alive. When the market is good, many issues get masked by rising prices and abundant liquidity. But once we enter a bear market, factors like a strategy’s ability to withstand drawdowns, the availability of capital, and whether funds can be efficiently allocated across different markets become magnified. No matter how strong the algorithm is, it can’t eliminate the need for sufficient and flexible capital. For many small quant teams, it’s not necessarily that their underlying strategies have failed—it’s that their capital structure can’t support them through drawdowns and liquidity contractions. This becomes even more apparent as arbitrage profits get thinner. An institution’s strategy might simultaneously involve Crypto derivatives, RWA, spot markets, and even stocks, forex, and commodities. If assets and positions are spread across different platforms, accounts, and margin systems, each side requires independent margin reserves, leaving a significant portion of capital idle. For arbitrage and hedging strategies with only a few basis points of profit margin, these seemingly minor capital inefficiencies can end up eating directly into net returns. That’s why I strongly agree with the mention of “capital efficiency” in the article. Institutions are no longer just focused on where Alpha can be generated—they’re also asking whether the same pool of capital can be used more efficiently within safe boundaries. Unified accounts, cross-asset margining, collateral reuse, and clear risk isolation mechanisms might not just be product features in the future—they could become core infrastructure that institutions prioritize when choosing platforms. The recent discussions around the Leopold–Citadel case actually offer an interesting perspective: identifying Alpha and having a robust enough capital structure to support Alpha are two entirely different skill sets. Finding Alpha is important, but being able to control risk while enabling capital to endure cycles, continuously support, and amplify Alpha might be the truly scarce capability. From this perspective, the next phase of competition between exchanges might no longer be just about liquidity and trading volume, but rather a comprehensive battle over safety, capital efficiency, account systems, and multi-asset infrastructure. Bear markets are indeed brutal, but it’s precisely during these cycles that platforms capable of meeting institutions’ long-term needs will gradually pull ahead.