Bitcoin's market structure is undergoing a significant transformation, moving away from its traditional four-year cycle toward a six-to-eight-year rhythm more aligned with Wall Street dynamics. Analyst Wu points out that this shift signals a reshaping of asset pricing power by macroeconomic forces, rather than purely internal supply mechanics.
Following the April 2024 halving, block rewards were reduced to 3.125 bitcoins, bringing the annual new supply to approximately 164,250 BTC, which represents 0.82% of the total circulating supply. According to data compiled by Woofun AI, projections indicate that after the next halving in 2028, the annual new supply will further contract to 82,125 BTC, dropping to just 0.41% of circulation. This trend highlights a significantly diminishing supply-shock effect with each successive halving event.
In stark contrast, institutional channels including exchange-traded products and corporate bonds have now accumulated more than 2.7 million bitcoins, a scale exceeding 16 times the annual output of miners. As these assets become entrenched on corporate balance sheets and within regulated investment vehicles, the marginal impact of miner-generated supply on the broader market continues to weaken, allowing institutional holdings to emerge as the dominant market variable.
Credit conditions, global liquidity, and portfolio capital flows are now superseding halving events as the core driving forces behind Bitcoin's price action. The interplay between monetary policy and investor psychology has rendered the four-year cycle pattern merely a point of reference, providing historical context rather than reliable predictive power. While the six-to-eight-year cycle theory has yet to be fully validated, it clearly reflects the new operational logic of Bitcoin in its post-financialization era.