Recently, a rather explosive statement has been circulating in the industry — that the Bitcoin four-year cycle, which has been used for many years, might really be invalid now.

This claim came from the founder of a major exchange, who directly criticized during a conference in the Middle East: stop blindly believing in the halving cycle, the market gameplay has changed, and the super cycle is what's coming next. Honestly, this is a bold perspective. After all, over the past decade, Bitcoin's rhythm has basically followed the pattern of "block reward halving → tightening supply → sharp price increase → bubble burst → bear market dormancy," with almost no deviations.

But things are different now.

The influx of institutional funds over the past two years has been visibly rapid. Traditional financial giants like BlackRock and Fidelity are aggressively accumulating through ETFs, and global macro policies are also shifting. This is no longer small-scale retail-led trading; the entire traditional financial system is starting to take cryptocurrencies seriously. Plus, there’s a very critical development happening on the supply side of Bitcoin — more and more coins are being permanently lost.

Data from Chainalysis shows that over 4 million Bitcoins have completely exited circulation due to lost private keys, damaged hard drives, and similar reasons, accounting for nearly 20% of the total supply. The story of a British programmer losing $850 million by throwing away a hard drive, along with the massive assets forgotten by early miners, are all real gold that has vanished into the blockchain forever, unrecoverable. Bitcoin, which is already scarce, is now even more in demand.

Interestingly, the "institutional pursuit + value revaluation" script seen in Bitcoin is now being replayed on Ethereum. Take BlackRock as an example — on December 8th, last year, they transferred 24,000 ETH to a compliant platform, worth over $78 million. Their holdings increased by 252.3% within the year, approaching nearly 3.8 million ETH. Ethereum is now not only the leader in smart contracts but also supports real-world demand like stablecoin trading and RWA tokenization. Its position as the second major asset for institutional crypto investment is becoming more solid.

Bitcoin defines digital gold, while Ethereum is building the infrastructure for global decentralized finance.

If the halving cycle really no longer works, supply continues to shrink, and institutions are still rushing in, what might the next market trend look like? Can Ethereum take over Bitcoin and become the main player in the next bull run? These questions will likely have answers very soon.