Bitcoin’s price history has long been tied to a roughly four-year rhythm: a halving event cuts new supply by 50%, scarcity fuels big rallies and those advance stages are followed by deep pullbacks. That pattern has guided expectations for investors since the cryptocurrency’s debut.
Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood says that model may be fading. In an interview with Fox Business, she argued recent moves are being driven more by institutional adoption than by the retail-driven responses that followed past halvings. As exchange-traded funds, corporate treasury allocations and steady institutional flows have grown, Wood says volatility is moderating compared with earlier cycles that saw 75–90% drawdowns.
“We think that the move by institutions into this new asset class is going to prevent much more of a decline,” she said, suggesting the market may already have put in a low weeks earlier. Where prior cycles relied on reduced supply to pull in retail buyers, Wood sees capital now dominated by institutional vehicles.
Wood also says Bitcoin’s market behavior increasingly resembles a risk-on asset correlated with equities rather than a consistent safe haven. She acknowledged exceptional occasions when Bitcoin behaved as a risk-off asset — for example during parts of the European sovereign debt crisis and the 2023 U.S. regional banking stress — but believes the asset has shifted back toward risk-on dynamics. “Now, gold is more of a risk-off asset,” she added, calling investors’ use of gold to hedge geopolitical risk evidence that they are “climbing a wall of worry.”
Wood previously outlined a bullish long-term target of $1.5 million per Bitcoin by 2030 but trimmed that peak forecast by $300,000 in November. She cited stablecoins as a factor eroding Bitcoin’s store-of-value role in some emerging markets.
Her view frames a changing market structure: as institutional participation rises, Bitcoin’s historical halving-driven cycle may weaken, producing a different volatility and correlation profile than in earlier years.