A global liquidity shift is quietly occurring. When the Bank of Japan raised interest rates to 0.75% at the end of last year, a thirty-year high, no one expected this to be the last straw that broke the camel's back for that classic arbitrage trade.

Individual investors in Japan, holding $15 trillion in household assets, are withdrawing their dollar assets on an unprecedented scale. This group is not institutional hedge funds; their collective actions are often more impactful than any operations on Wall Street.

Why is this happening? The logic is actually quite straightforward:

**Collapse of the Interest Spread**. In the past, when the U.S. cut interest rates and Japan maintained low rates, investors engaging in yen arbitrage made a fortune. Now, the situation has reversed— the Federal Reserve is no longer aggressively cutting rates, while the Bank of Japan is raising rates. In this environment, continuing to short the yen is practically suicide. Costs are skyrocketing, and those massive positions are being forced to close, causing a chain reaction that spreads throughout the entire market.

**The pressure on U.S. Treasuries and U.S. stocks follows.** These retail investors are not retreating slowly, but are collectively selling off dollar assets to pay off debts. Although it may not appear as shocking numerically as certain large institutional operations, the coordinated actions of retail investors are often more difficult to predict and hedge.

Traditional assets are in turmoil, and hot money is beginning to seek new havens. Community assets with high consensus and high elasticity have become the new destination for these funds. In simple terms, when the market has yet to find direction, a strong ecosystem and a clear community foundation become the most scarce resources. This also explains why, amidst tightening in the mainstream market, certain assets with strong community attributes can still attract attention against the trend — not because of any magical news, but because certainty itself is valuable.