Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood: Bitcoin’s Four-Year Cycle Will Be ‘Disrupted’

In brief

• Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood believes that Bitcoin’s historic four-year cycle will be “disrupted.”
• She argues this is due to the increased presence of institutional investors compared to previous Bitcoin halvings.
• Other commentators, such as multinational bank Standard Chartered, have expressed similar views on the four-year cycle.

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Famed tech investor Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Invest, has argued that Bitcoin’s historic four-year cycle will be “disrupted” as institutions have increasingly piled into the asset.

Where Bitcoin “regularly dropped 75-90% in its early days,” Wood said in an interview with Fox Business Tuesday, more recently, “The volatility’s going down.”

“We think that the move by institutions into this new asset class is going to prevent much more of a decline,” she added, arguing that, “We may have seen the low a couple of weeks ago.”

Every four years, the reward for mining new blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain halves. The last such “halving” occurred on April 20, 2024, when the reward for new blocks was slashed to 3.125 bitcoins. Historically, halvings have triggered bull runs by reducing the supply of new BTC.

Wood also delved into her belief that Bitcoin is now functioning more as a “risk-on asset”—one that moves in line with the performance of the broader economy, such as stocks or real estate. In contrast, a “risk-off asset” is one investors turn to in times of trouble or volatility, for example, gold during the 2008 financial crisis.

She argued that Bitcoin has “played the risk-off role at different times in its history,” such as during the European sovereign debt crisis or the US regional banking turmoil of 2023. But now, she believes Bitcoin has flipped back to risk-on.

“Now, gold is more of a risk-off asset,” she said. “We think this is proof that we are climbing a wall of worry. Investors are using gold as a hedge against geopolitical risk.”

On prediction market Myriad, owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, users place just a 4% chance on Bitcoin outperforming gold in 2025.

Wood has continued to make pro-crypto bets in recent months. Ark purchased additional shares in crypto exchange Coinbase, stablecoin issuer Circle, and its own Bitcoin ETF, the Ark 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ArkB), at the end of November.

The end of Bitcoin’s four-year cycle?

Wood is far from alone in predicting the end of Bitcoin’s historic “four-year cycle.” Earlier this week, British bank Standard Chartered released a report arguing that the advent of ETF buying has rendered the traditional halving cycle “no longer relevant” as a price driver.

“With the advent of ETF buying, we think the BTC halving cycle is no longer a relevant price driver,” wrote Standard Chartered analyst Geoffrey Kendrick, arguing that, “The logic in previous cycles (when US ETFs did not exist)—i.e., prices would peak about 18 months after each halving and decline thereafter—is no longer valid, in our view.”

Standard Chartered predicted that its thesis on the halving cycle will be vindicated in the first half of 2026, while lowering its Bitcoin price target for 2025 from $200,000 to $100,000.