幣圈散戶苦等歷史重演？Bitwise 執行長：「4 年週期」已死，機構時代降臨

If you are still waiting for the cryptocurrency market to "rebound on time" according to past historical scripts, Hunter Horsley, co-founder and CEO of asset management giant Bitwise, offers a brutal but true piece of advice: stop waiting. Hunter Horsley stated: "The 4-year bull-bear cycle of Bitcoin has completely ended." He explained that the industry previously held a firm belief in the "3 years up, 1 year down" rule. Since last year was a down year, the old rhythm has been broken, and this cycle should be declared over. A New Chapter: The Institutional Battlefield As the "4-year cycle" becomes history, the growing digital asset space will usher in a brand-new industry landscape. Hunter Horsley quoted 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 the current game. For example, hot topics in the industry no longer revolve around native cryptocurrency exchanges like Gemini, but are instead replaced 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" Speaking of the preferred stock Stretch (STRC) issued by Strategy, Hunter Horsley's attitude is extremely clear and optimistic. He said: "I think this trend is unstoppable, and it is still in a very early stage." He compared STRC to the "disappearing photo" feature pioneered by Snapchat: it was surprising and met with market skepticism at first, but ultimately hit a pain point and precisely satisfied the underlying needs of users. Hunter Horsley believes that STRC uses 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 popular throughout the industry, completely extending the application map of Bitcoin to the traditional fixed-income market. And none of this would have been possible without the actuarial work 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 coins." Restarting the Payment Narrative Regarding the largest asset in the cryptocurrency market, Hunter Horsley also refuted the common market view that Bitcoin's "payment vision has been completely replaced by 'store of value'." He believes that over the past 10 years, the market had to establish a consensus that "Bitcoin itself has value." Today, that debate has been settled. With hundreds of millions of people worldwide holding Bitcoin and the consensus on its value becoming increasingly solid, the prerequisites for Bitcoin to re-emerge 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 Ally in the Crypto Space Bitwise currently manages up to $15 billion in assets, covering 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 instead promoted the vigorous development of the entire industry. He admitted that BlackRock's gold-standard reputation has actually completed the most difficult market education and sales work for all cryptocurrency practitioners (including Bitwise): "BlackRock is simply the strongest ally for Bitwise. The biggest obstacle to Bitwise's growth has never been BlackRock, but rather investors feeling that 'there is no need to invest funds in cryptocurrency,' or worrying that 'buying cryptocurrency will get me into trouble.'" Hunter Horsley described this competition as a contest between "specialists" and "generalists": on one side is Bitwise, with 200 employees focused on cryptocurrency; on the other is a traditional asset management giant with diversified businesses. It is the latter's credibility endorsement that successfully stamped "institutional certification" on crypto assets, allowing institutional capital that was originally hesitant and planning to stay on the sidelines forever to finally be willing to enter the market bravely.