Crypto winter has a branding problem.

The phrase makes it sound like the chain goes quiet, wallets stop moving, and the whole machine turns cold. However, the cleanest proof of retail pulling back rarely lives on-chain.

The people who vanish first aren’t the power users bridging stables into DeFi or the long-term holders shuffling coins between cold storage addresses. They’re the casual participants who show up when risk feels fun, open a broker app, tap market buy, and then disappear without leaving a neat on-chain footprint.

That’s why the most usable retail barometer sits in an often overlooked place: the earnings lines of Robinhood and Coinbase.

When retail activity thins out, brokers feel it as fewer trades, lower notional, and…