The Old Rules for Crypto Investors No Longer Apply #
Bitcoin has been known since its inception for one recurring pattern: every four years, the rate at which new bitcoins are created is halved, and each time, a major price surge followed. For many investors, this cyclical feeling has become almost second nature.
But according to asset manager Grayscale, that era is changing. The current market is developing so differently from previous years that Bitcoin may no longer follow the traditional four-year cycle.
Institutional Money Drives the Market #
The biggest change, according to Grayscale, lies in who is now driving the market. Inflows are increasingly coming through ETFs, corporate balance sheets, and professional funds. Compare that to a decade ago.
Grayscale notes that Bitcoin was previously driven mainly by retail traders—people who bought and sold based on emotion, leading to explosive peaks and equally sharp crashes. The bull runs of 2013 and 2017 remained etched in collective memory.
Institutional players behave very differently. This type of money waits patiently instead of mass entering and exiting on hype, and we’ve seen this reflected in price movements this year.
The rise preceding the recent correction was much calmer, and the drop of about 30% fits more with “a normal correction within a larger trend.” In the new market, other factors also play a role in rallies and corrections. These are increasingly driven by macroeconomic factors, such as interest rate policy, liquidity expectations, and new regulations in the U.S.
Why Some Analystists Still Follow the Cycle #
The data also supports this shift. Glassnode observes that long-term holders are holding a record share of the circulating supply. Coins are disappearing into the storage of exchange funds and often don’t move for months. This reduces the free supply and makes the market more stable, even during significant price fluctuations.
Yet, not everyone is convinced that the halving story is over. Some analysts point out that the halving is still a hard, irreversible supply constraint. Moreover, patterns in long-term holder behavior often coincide remarkably with halving events. And while institutional players dominate, retail can still return in euphoric phases.
What is clear: the 2025 market works differently than those of 2013 or 2017. Increasingly, analysts are moving away from rigid time models and prefer to look at liquidity, accumulation, and ETF inflows. With that, Bitcoin seems to be slowly evolving from a cyclical hype coin to an asset that moves with the broader financial system.