Retail investors in the crypto space waiting for history to repeat itself? Bitwise CEO: The "4-year cycle" is dead, the era of institutions has arrived

If you are still waiting for the cryptocurrency market to "rebound on time" according to historical scripts, Hunter Horsley, co-founder and CEO of asset management giant Bitwise, offers a brutal but honest piece of advice: stop waiting. Hunter Horsley stated, "The 4-year bull-bear cycle of Bitcoin has officially come to an end." He explained that the crypto industry long held the ironclad belief of "3 years up, 1 year down." Since last year was a down year, the old rhythm has been broken, and this cycle should be considered concluded. A New Chapter: The Institutional Battlefield As the "4-year cycle" becomes history, the growing digital asset space will welcome a brand-new industry landscape. Hunter Horsley cited the famous quote by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Hunter Horsley emphasized that old market inertia and intuition are completely ineffective in today's game. For example, the industry's hot topics no longer revolve around native crypto exchanges like Gemini, but are instead dominated by Wall Street investment banks like Morgan Stanley. Meanwhile, stablecoins, with a total supply exceeding $300 billion, have gained as much attention as the altcoins that were once heavily hyped. In Hunter Horsley's interpretation, this new chapter will be led by mainstream financial institutions. While the number of oligopolistic players in the market may decrease, overall adoption will increase significantly, and the market structure will be vastly different from the past. The "STRC Effect" When discussing the preferred stock Stretch (STRC) issued by Strategy, Hunter Horsley’s stance is clear and optimistic. He said, "I think this trend is unstoppable, and we are still in the very early stages." He compared STRC to the "disappearing photo" feature pioneered by Snapchat: initially surprising and met with market skepticism, but ultimately hitting a pain point and precisely satisfying the underlying needs of users. Hunter Horsley believes STRC employs the same strategy. It uses Bitcoin as collateral to support a stable Net Asset Value (NAV) while providing yield to investors. He predicts that within the next 12 months, such products will become widespread across the industry, extending the application map of Bitcoin into the traditional fixed-income market. None of this would have been possible without the actuarial precision and promotion of Strategy founder Michael Saylor. Last month, STRC hit a record high in daily trading volume and became a "money printer" for Strategy to continuously purchase Bitcoin. However, Michael Saylor recently admitted for the first time that the company might need to sell some Bitcoin to pay STRC dividends, breaking his long-standing promise of "never selling Bitcoin." Restarting the Payment Narrative Regarding the largest asset in the cryptocurrency market, Hunter Horsley also refuted the common market belief that Bitcoin's "payment vision has been completely replaced by 'store of value'." He believes that for the past 10 years, the market had to establish a consensus that "Bitcoin itself has value." Now, that debate has been settled. With hundreds of millions of people worldwide holding Bitcoin and a growing consensus on its value, the prerequisites for Bitcoin to make a comeback as a "payment tool" have finally fallen into place. In fact, the speed at which we are entering this new chapter of "Bitcoin payments" will be faster than everyone imagines. BlackRock is Not a Threat, But the Strongest Teammate Bitwise currently manages $15 billion in assets across more than 30 products, almost all of which have been accumulated since 2021 (starting with less than $1 billion). Facing the aggressive entry of asset management giant BlackRock into the cryptocurrency market, Hunter Horsley believes that BlackRock's participation has actually driven the prosperity of the entire industry. He admitted that BlackRock's gold-standard reputation has effectively completed the most difficult market education and sales work for all crypto firms (including Bitwise): "BlackRock is simply the strongest teammate for Bitwise. The biggest obstacle to Bitwise's growth has never been BlackRock, but rather investors feeling that 'there is no need to allocate capital to cryptocurrency' or worrying that 'buying cryptocurrency will lead to trouble'." Hunter Horsley describes this competition as a battle between "specialists" and "generalists": on one side is Bitwise, with 200 employees focused solely on cryptocurrency; on the other is a traditional asset management giant with diversified businesses. It is the latter's credibility that has successfully stamped crypto assets with an "institutional seal of approval," finally encouraging institutional capital that was hesitant and planning to stay on the sidelines forever to bravely enter the market.