Original title: From retail carnival to institution-led, is Bitcoin's four-year bull market cycle coming to an end? There's been a lot of talk around Bitcoin's quadrennial bull-bear cycle. This pattern of exponentially rising, crashing, and then climbing to new highs has been used throughout most of Bitcoin's history. It is important to note, however, that there are good reasons to suggest that this four-year cycle may be coming to an end. The first question to ask is: why is there a four-year cycle? It boils down to three factors: the halving effectEvery time the number of blocks increases by 210,000 (about four years), the Bitcoin mining reward is halved. By creating supply shortages, this mechanism can often cause price increases in subsequent years. Asset scarcity is often measured in terms of inventory/flow ratio (S2F), which is the ratio of total existing supply to annual new supply. Gold, a scarce asset, for example, has an S2F ratio of 60 (subject to small fluctuations due to new gold discoveries). Bitcoin's current S2F ratio is around 120, meaning that its annual new supply is only about half that of gold. This number will increase with each halving thereafter. The correlation between Bitcoin and global M2 liquidity in the global liquidity cycle has been explained by us and many other institutions. It is worth noting that many believe that liquidity also follows a cyclical pattern of about four years. Although not as precise as the metronome of the Bitcoin halving, the correlation does exist. If this theory is true, there is a rational logic to the phenomenon of Bitcoin keeping pace with it. From a psychological point of view, every time a crazy bull market appears, it will give birth to a new wave of popularity. The pattern of people's behaviour confirms Gandhi's assertion that if you ignore you, then laugh at you, then confront you, you will win. And so on and so forth, and every four years or so, people come to a deeper acceptance of Bitcoin's value, giving it a stronger sense of legitimacy. People get overexcited, and the crash that follows keeps the cycle going on again. Now the question is, are these factors still dominating the price of Bitcoin? 1. The halving effectAfter each halving, the decreasing proportion of the number of new bitcoins to the total supply becomes weaker and weaker. When the new supply accounted for 25% of the total supply, the drop to 12.5% did have a huge impact; Today, from about 0.8% to 0.4%, the actual impact is no longer the same. Retail dominance has shifted to institutional dominance, and trading behavior has changed. Institutions are doing long-term accumulation, and short- to medium-term price declines will not shake them out of the market. Therefore, while global liquidity will still have an impact on the price of Bitcoin, its sensitivity to M2 liquidity will continue to wane. In addition, the purchase of bitcoin by over-the-counter institutions also reduces price volatility, which is where the real confidence of bitcoin lies. Runaway financial spending will be absorbed by Bitcoin and continue to move towards a bright future. 3. From a psychological point of view, the more widely Bitcoin is adopted, the more stable it will be at people's psychological level. The impact of retail selling will be diminished, and the shift of market dominance to institutional buyers will also reduce the volatility caused by retail investors. Taken together, Bitcoin remains one of the most promising assets in the world, and its growth model is undergoing a transformation from cyclical growth to linear growth (on a logarithmic scale). Global liquidity has become the dominant force in the current market, and unlike the top-down transmission path of most assets (from institutional to retail), Bitcoin has achieved bottom-up penetration from the mass base to the mainstream institutions. Because of this, we are witnessing the stabilization of the market as it matures, and its evolutionary model is becoming more and more disciplined.