Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood says Bitcoin’s well-known four-year cycle may no longer define the asset’s long-term behavior, arguing that institutional adoption is reshaping everything from volatility to how deep future drawdowns might be.

Speaking with Fox Business on Tuesday, Wood said Bitcoin’s sharp crashes, often 75% to 90% in earlier years, are becoming less common as large financial players accumulate the asset.

“The volatility’s going down,” she said, adding that institutions “are going to prevent much more of a decline.” Wood suggested that “we may have seen the low a couple of weeks ago.”

Her view challenges more than a decade of market expectations. Bitcoin’s cycle has traditionally followed its halving events, block reward reductions that occur roughly every four years.

Once a reliable pattern, the four-year Bitcoin cycle may no longer hold. Here’s what changed, and why it matters now more than ever.#BTC #BitcoinCycle #Adoption #ETFshttps://t.co/u9CF9ib8VW

— Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) July 31, 2025

The most recent halving on April 20, 2024, cut the mining reward to 3.125 BTC, historically a trigger for supply squeezes and strong rallies.

However, Wood argues that the market’s behavior has shifted, as Bitcoin trades more like a risk-on asset, moving in line with equities and real estate rather than acting as a hedge.

“Now, gold is more of a risk-off asset,” she said, noting that investors use it to protect against geopolitical shocks.

Ark has continued adding crypto exposure, recently buying more shares of Coinbase, Circle, and its own Ark 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB).

A Growing Debate: Is the Four-Year Cycle Finished?

Wood’s comments land in the middle of a wider industry debate. Analysts across major institutions say Bitcoin no longer responds to halving cycles the way it once did.

Earlier this week, Standard Chartered said ETF buying has reduced the halving’s influence as a price driver.

Analyst Geoffrey Kendrick wrote that the pattern of prices peaking 18 months after each halving is “no longer valid,” lowering the bank’s 2025 price target from $200,000 to $100,000.

Standard Chartered analyst Geoffrey Kendrick says Bitcoin's dip below $100,000 may represent the last buying opportunity at these levels.#Bitcoin #Diphttps://t.co/ovUdBhe9bg

— Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) November 6, 2025

On social media, the debate has been intense since late July.

Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan and CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju both said institutional inflows have effectively erased the traditional cycle. “The cycle is dead,” Ju wrote.

For years, Bitcoin followed a rhythm: accumulation, a rally tied to halving effects, a peak, then a multi-year downturn.

But this time, after hitting $122,000 in July, analysts say Bitcoin’s behavior looks different, slower, steadier, and less tied to retail speculation.

Sentora executive Patrick Heusser pointed to the Bitcoin Power Law model, which views price growth as part of a long-term curve influenced by time rather than strict four-year windows.

Halvings still matter, he said, but only as interruptions within a broader trend.

“Daily supply reduced by only 450 BTC,” he noted, calling it marginal compared to Bitcoin’s trillions in market value and the billions flowing into spot ETFs.

Institutional accumulation, from ETFs, corporate treasuries, and new regulated products, is widely seen as the biggest driver reshaping the market. These buyers rarely exit positions quickly, locking up supply in a way that smooths out volatility.

Bitcoin’s Market Structure Still Mirrors Past Cycles, Glassnode Argues

Still, some firms say the cycle remains intact. In August, Glassnode published data showing that the current cycle’s structure mirrors earlier ones, including long-term holder behavior and late-cycle demand softening.

Glassnode analysis suggests Bitcoin's 4-year cycle remains intact despite institutional adoption challenging "cycle death" narrative.#Bitcoin #Cyclehttps://t.co/qEureDHIyL

— Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) August 21, 2025

Despite institutional involvement, Glassnode argued that Bitcoin’s timing still aligns closely with past multi-year peaks.

As experts debate whether the cycle is broken or simply evolving, most agree that investors should expect a market defined by longer trends instead of dramatic, fast swings.

Analysts say crashes may be shallower, closer to 30% to 50% instead of the deep drawdowns of past years, but rallies may also stretch over longer periods.

Strategies built around precise halving timing may no longer work with the same accuracy.

Macro analyst Lyn Alden recently said Bitcoin’s current market conditions lack the euphoria needed for a major collapse, adding that broader economic forces now dictate the asset’s movement.

She expects Bitcoin to reclaim $100,000 by 2026, but warned that the path there will be uneven.

The post Cathie Wood Says Bitcoin’s 4-Year Cycle is Breaking as Institutions Steady the Market appeared first on Cryptonews.

Ark Invest’s CEO and CIO, Cathie Wood, joined Fox Business’s “Morning With Maria” to discuss her investment strategy as she believes the US is entering a “historic productivity surge,” and why she is bullish on Bitcoin (BTC) for 2026.

The Four-Year Cycle Will Be ‘Disrupted’

On Tuesday, Ark Invest’s CEO, Cathie Wood, shared her perspective on the recent Bitcoin performance, which has retraced over 10% in the past month and struggled to reclaim crucial levels over the past few weeks.

To Wood, Bitcoin has been behaving like a risk-on asset and is currently “climbing another wall of worry” that has made investors wary of the leading crypto asset’s upcoming performance.

As she explained, there is a fear of the four-year cycle, which suggests that 2026 will be a corrective year for Bitcoin. Historically, BTC has seen significant price pullbacks during bear markets, with retraces of up to 75% to 90% in previous cycles.

The aggressive Q4 2025 correction has shattered most investors’ expectations of an end-of-year bull run, raising concerns that the crypto market has already entered the bearish phase of the cycle after the more than 30% drop from the October highs.

However, Ark Invest’s CEO considers that “the four-year cycle is going to be disrupted” as volatility has significantly diminished over the past few years, and large-scale investors turn to the rapidly growing industry.

“We think that the move by institutions into this new asset class is going to prevent much more of a decline,” Wood affirmed, noting, “we might have seen it a couple of weeks ago,” when BTC managed to hold the $80,000 barrier during the late November correction.

She previously asserted that growing institutional adoption will be a powerful driver for long-term value for the cryptocurrency, adding that institutions “really have just dipped their toes into this space. We have just started, so we have a long way to go.”

Bitcoin To Outperform Gold Soon?

 

During the interview, Wood also reaffirmed her previous forecast that the flagship crypto will outperform gold next year, despite its choppy performance during the last quarter of 2025.

She highlighted that “gold is more of a risk-off asset,” and its 60% year-to-date (YTD) rise is “proof” that Bitcoin is climbing a wall of worry as investors “are using gold as a hedge against geopolitical risks.”

Nonetheless, Ark Invest’s CEO pointed out that between the early 80s and the late 90s, gold peaked and “went down as we were in the golden age of innovation, ending with the internet.”

Now, she believes that the same could happen soon, as what she calls “the AI age” starts and the market potentially recovers. Meanwhile, she forecasted that Bitcoin would remain risk-on and outperform gold in 2026.

“I really believe we are moving from a rolling recession where we’ve been for the last three years, into a rolling recovery, which we think we are entering now. Then, a productivity-driven boom the likes of which we have never seen before,” Wood concluded.

 As of this writing, Bitcoin is trading at $94,011, a 3.75% increase in the daily timeframe.

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