Has the Halving Effect Faded, Are Institutions Driving Bitcoin's New Cycle?

Original Author: Andjela Radmilac

Original Compilation: Luffy, Foresight News

The Bitcoin four-year cycle was once a reassurance for crypto market participants. Even those who claimed not to believe in this pattern consistently followed it in their actual trading operations.

Approximately every four years, the supply of new Bitcoin halves. The market remains calm for several months, then liquidity begins to flow in, leveraged capital follows closely, retail investors rediscover their wallet passwords, and the Bitcoin price chart embarks on a new journey to challenge all-time highs.

Asset management firm 21Shares outlines the contours of this old script with straightforward data: In 2012, Bitcoin rose from around $12 to $1,150, then corrected by 85%; in 2016, it climbed from about $650 to $20,000, followed by an 80% crash; in 2020, it surged from roughly $8,700 to $69,000, then retreated by 75%.

Therefore, when the rhetoric of "the cycle is dead" gained significant traction in late 2025, the market was shaken because this voice came not only from the crypto retail crowd but was also widely disseminated by institutions: Bitwise suggested the 2026 cycle might break the old pattern, Grayscale bluntly stated the crypto market has entered a new institutional era, and 21Shares explicitly questioned whether the four-year cycle remains valid.

From these heated discussions, we can distill one core fact: Bitcoin halving remains a fixed event and will continue to be a force to be reckoned with in the market, but it is no longer the sole factor determining the rhythm of Bitcoin's price movements.

This does not mean the end of cycles; it's just that today's market has countless "clocks," and they all run at different speeds.

The Old Cycle Was a "Lazy Calendar," Now a Mental Trap

The Bitcoin halving cycle never possessed any magic; its effectiveness simply stemmed from condensing three core logics into a clear temporal node: reduced new coin supply, a narrative anchor for the market, and a shared focal point for investor positioning. This "calendar" solved the market's coordination problem for capital.

Investors didn't need to delve deep into liquidity models, the workings of the cross-asset financial system, or figure out who the marginal buyer was. They just needed to point to this key four-year node and say, "Just wait patiently."

But this is precisely why the old cycle became a mental trap. The clearer the script, the easier it is to foster a singular trading mindset: position ahead of the halving, wait for the price surge, sell at the peak, buy the dip in the bear market. When this operational model no longer delivers clear, substantial returns as expected, the market's reaction becomes extreme: either firmly believing the cycle still dominates everything, or concluding the cycle is dead.

Both camps seem to overlook the real changes in Bitcoin's market structure.

Today, Bitcoin's investor base is more diverse, investment channels are closer to traditional financial markets, and the core venues determining its price discovery are increasingly aligning with mainstream risk asset markets. State Street's interpretation of institutional demand precisely confirms this: Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Products (ETPs) have achieved regulatory compliance, this "familiar financial instrument" effect is influencing the market, and Bitcoin remains the highest-market-cap core asset in the crypto market.

Once the core forces driving the market change, its operating rhythm will adjust accordingly. This is not because the halving's effect has diminished, but because it now has to contend with other forces whose influence may overshadow the halving for a long time.

Policy and ETFs Become the New Pace-Setters

To understand why the old cycle is now largely irrelevant, we need to start with the part of the story least related to "crypto": the cost of capital.

On December 10, 2025, the Federal Reserve lowered its target range for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points to 3.50%-3.75%. Weeks later, Reuters reported that Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Milan advocated for more aggressive rate cuts in 2026, including considering a total reduction of 150 basis points for the year. Meanwhile, the People's Bank of China also stated it would maintain reasonably ample liquidity in 2026 through measures like reserve requirement ratio cuts and interest rate reductions.

This means that when global financing conditions tighten or ease, the group of buyers able and willing to hold highly volatile assets also changes, setting the tone for the trajectory of all assets.

Combined with the impact of spot Bitcoin ETFs, the four-year cycle narrative appears even more one-sided.

Spot ETFs undoubtedly introduced a new cohort of buyers to the market, but more importantly, they changed the shape of demand. Under the ETF product structure, buying pressure manifests as the creation of fund shares, while selling pressure appears as the redemption of fund shares.

The factors driving these fund flows may have nothing to do with the Bitcoin halving: portfolio rebalancing, risk budget adjustments, cross-asset price declines, tax considerations, approval progress on wealth management platforms, and slow distribution processes.

The importance of this last point far exceeds common perception. Bank of America announced that starting January 5, 2026, it would expand the authority of financial advisors to recommend crypto ETP products. This seemingly ordinary access adjustment actually changes the scope of potential buyers, their investment methods, and compliance constraints.

This also explains why the "cycle is dead" rhetoric, even in its strongest formulations, has clear limitations. The argument does not deny the halving's impact; it merely emphasizes that it can no longer single-handedly dictate the market's rhythm.

Bitwise's overall outlook for the 2026 market is based on this logic: macro policy is crucial, investment channels are crucial, and when marginal buyers come from traditional financial channels rather than crypto-native ones, market performance will be fundamentally different. 21Shares expressed similar views in its cycle-focused analysis and its "2026 Market Outlook," suggesting institutional integration will become a core driver of future crypto asset trading.

Grayscale went a step further, defining 2026 as a year of deep integration between the crypto market and the U.S. financial market structure and regulatory system. In other words, today's crypto market is more tightly woven into the daily operations of the traditional financial system.

If we were to redefine Bitcoin's cycle pattern, the most concise way is to view it as a set of "regulatory indicators" that change weekly.

The first indicator is the policy path: not only focusing on the direction of interest rates but also considering marginal tightening or easing in financial conditions, and whether the pace of related market narratives is accelerating or slowing.

The second indicator is the ETF fund flow mechanism, as the creation and redemption of fund shares directly reflect the real inflow and outflow of market demand through this mainstream new channel.

The third indicator is distribution channels: which entities are permitted to buy at scale and under what constraints. When access to large wealth management channels, brokerage platforms, or model portfolios is eased, the buyer base expands in a slow, mechanical manner, with an impact far greater than a single day's market frenzy. Conversely, when access is restricted, the channels for capital inflow also narrow.

Additionally, there are two indicators for measuring the internal state of the market. The first is volatility characteristics: determining whether prices are set by steady two-way trading or dominated by market stress, the latter often accompanied by rapid sell-offs and liquidity drying up, frequently triggered by forced deleveraging.

The second is the health of market positioning: observing whether leveraged positions are patiently accumulated or excessively stacked, increasing market fragility. Sometimes, Bitcoin's spot price may appear stable, but the underlying positioning is already overcrowded and risky; other times, price action may seem chaotic, but leverage is quietly resetting, and market risks are gradually being released.

In summary, these indicators do not negate the halving's role; they merely place it within a more appropriate structural context. The timing and shape of Bitcoin's major price movements are increasingly determined by liquidity, fund flow systems, and the concentration of risk in a single direction.

Derivatives Transform Cycle Peaks into Risk Transfer Markets

The third clock is overlooked by most cycle theories because it's harder to explain: derivatives.

In the past retail-dominated "pump-and-dump" model, leverage acted like a party that spiraled out of control at the end.

In a market with higher institutional participation, derivatives are no longer a secondary investment choice but a core channel for risk transfer. This changes when and how market stress manifests and resolves.

In early January 2026, on-chain analytics firm Glassnode noted in its "On-Chain Weekly" that the crypto market had completed its year-end position reset, profit-taking had eased, and key cost basis levels had become important indicators for confirming a healthy market uptrend.

This stands in stark contrast to the market atmosphere during traditional cycle peaks, where the market often scrambled to justify vertical price surges.

Admittedly, derivatives haven't eliminated market manias, but they have profoundly changed how manias start, develop, and end.

Options allow large holders to express views while locking in downside risk; futures can alleviate spot selling pressure through hedging. Liquidation cascades still occur, but they may happen earlier, cleaning up positions before the market reaches its final manic peak. Ultimately, Bitcoin's price action may manifest as repeated cycles of "risk release - rapid surge."

This is also why public disagreements among large financial institutions become valuable rather than confusing.

On one hand, Bitwise proposed the view of "breaking the four-year cycle pattern" in late 2025; on the other hand, Fidelity Investments believed that even if 2026 might be a "consolidation year," Bitcoin's cycle pattern remains unbroken.

This divergence doesn't mean one side is right and the other foolish. What we can ascertain is that the old cycle is no longer the only available analytical model. The reasonable disagreements between different analytical frameworks exist because market influencing factors have become richer, now encompassing policy, fund flows, positioning, and market structure.

So, what complex form will the future of Bitcoin cycles take?

We can summarize it into three potential scenarios. They may be too mundane to become market memes, but they all hold practical trading and investment reference value:

• Cycle Lengthening: The halving remains influential, but the timing of price peaks will be delayed because liquidity injection and product distribution take longer to transmit to the market through traditional financial channels.
• Range-Bound Consolidation Followed by Gradual Ascent: Bitcoin will spend more time digesting supply shocks and positioning adjustment pressures until fund flows and policy direction align, triggering a trending move.
• Macro Shock Dominance: Policy adjustments and cross-asset market pressures dominate for a period. Faced with fund redemptions and market deleveraging, the impact of the halving becomes negligible.

If we must extract a clear conclusion from all this, it is this: Declaring the four-year cycle dead is merely a seemingly clever but ultimately meaningless shortcut.

A better, and the only reasonable, way to approach Bitcoin cycles is to acknowledge that today's market operates on multiple clocks. The winners in the 2026 market won't be those who memorize a single date, but those who can read the market's "operating pulse": discerning changes in the cost of capital, grasping the direction of ETF fund flows, and detecting the quiet accumulation and concentrated release of risk in the derivatives market.