Bitcoin‘s historical “cycle” is showing signs that it might be breaking as a changing profile of investors and supportive regulation reshapes market dynamics.

If this often predictable pattern is broken, it would have significant implications for the way investors assess the cryptocurrency’s price action and the potential timing of when to invest in bitcoin.

“It’s not officially over until we see positive returns in 2026. But I think we will, so let’s say this: I think the 4-year cycle is over,” Matthew Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management, told CNBC.

The halving happens roughly every four years, with the last one taking place in April 2024 and the one prior to that was in May 2020.

When the halving occurs, the rewards in the form of bitcoin that are given to so-called “miners” — entities that keep the bitcoin network functioning — are cut in half. This reduces the supply of bitcoin into the market. Therefore, there will only ever be 21 million bitcoin in existence.

Typically, bitcoin would rally in the months after halving to eventually reach a fresh all-time high. Then bitcoin would crash, dropping roughly 70% to 80% from its peak leading to the onset of a “crypto winter,” a prolonged period of depressed digital coin prices. The price of other cryptos would also fall dramatically in this period. Bitcoin would then trade within a range for a while, and as the next halving approaches, it generally sees its price appreciate. Then the cycle repeats.

There was unprecedented market reaction around the last halving as Bitcoin hit a fresh all-time high of above $73,000 in March 2024, about a month before the halving, rather than reaching new heights after the celebrated event as expected.

“In every previous cycle, new all-time highs came 12-18 months after the halving,” Saksham Diwan, research analyst at CoinDesk Data, told CNBC.

The main factor was the U.S. approval of bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) which began trading in January 2024. ETFs track the price movement of bitcoin without an investor actually having to own the cryptocurrency itself.

Big inflows into ETFs, and the hope that this could bring more traditional institutional investors who had previously stayed away from crypto, helped boost the price of bitcoin.

“This time, spot Bitcoin ETF demand essentially front-ran the typical post-halving price discovery. This was indeed the first clear indication that institutional flows could alter traditional cycle dynamics,” Diwan said.

Bitwise Asset Management’s Hougan points to “blowups in crypto” that often preceded the crypto winters. He referenced the crash of so-called initial coin offerings (ICOs) in 2018 and the collapse of crypto exchange FTX in 2022.

Meanwhile, the macroeconomic environment and regulation is becoming more supportive.

“Interest rates are more likely to go down than up in the next year, and the fact that regulators and legislators are now willing to engage with crypto rather than steadfastly refusing to deal with it will dramatically reduce the risk of future blow-ups,” Hougan said.

Gary Gensler, the former leader of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, had cracked down on the sector and opened a number of cases against crypto firms. Those in the industry said they were being unfairly targeted. Under the current administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, the SEC has dropped some cases against crypto firms. Washington has looked to introduce new laws around crypto and has even launched a bitcoin strategic reserve.

Meanwhile, public companies are accumulating cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin, as part of a new strategy.

“With increasing market maturity, long-term holder accumulation at all-time highs, and dampened volatility, the traditional 4-year rhythm is being replaced by more liquidity-sensitive, macro-correlated behavior,” Ryan Chow, co-founder of Solv Protocol, told CNBC.

South Korea has tasked some of its biggest companies and promising startups to build a national foundational AI model using mainly domestic technology, in a rare move to keep the country apace with the U.S. and China.

The project will feature South Korean technologies from semiconductors to software, as Seoul looks to create a near self-sufficient AI industry and position itself as an alternative to China and the U.S.

The Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) for Korea announced that five consortia have been selected to develop the models. One is led by SK Telecom, a telecommunications giant in Korea and includes gaming firm Krafton and chip startup Rebellions among other companies.

There are other teams led by some of the country’s other prominent firms including LG and Naver.

“We are going through an important juncture in terms of our technological development. So Korea, at the national level, is focusing on ensuring that we lay the technical foundation to have our competitiveness,” Kim Taeyoon, head of the foundation model office at SK Telecom who also leads the company’s consortium, told CNBC.

“Korea has many entities that would excel at creating a big AI industry. And we could clearly see the possibility that we are very capable of creating a good AI stack,” Kim added.

A “stack” refers to various technologies that make up a product or other technology.

Given the intricacies of technology supply chains, no one country can do it alone. The consortia will still rely on graphics processing units (GPUs) from American firm Nvidia which have become the gold standard for training AI models.

Meanwhile, SK Telecom will train the models it develops on its own Titan supercomputer, which is made up of Nvidia GPUs, as well as an AI data center the company is developing with Amazon.

SK Telecom is not new to the AI model game. The company launched a beta version of its first chatbot based on its own large language model in 2022 called “A.” which is pronounced “A dot.” Since then, it has developed more advanced versions of the model and chatbot.

SK Telecom’s consortium plans to release its first model by the end of the year, Kim said. It will be initially focused on the market in South Korea, but could be used globally. The model will be open-source, meaning it will free for developers to use and build on, potentially with some licensing requirements.

Any AI models coming out of South Korea’s project will face intense competition from players including OpenAI and Anthropic as well as many of the strong open-source offerings out of Chinese firms like Alibaba and DeepSeek.

Creating an AI model won’t be a problem, given SK Telecom and other companies’ already-proven track record in doing so.

The bigger challenge will be putting forward models that can compete with those coming out of frontier AI labs, which are pouring billions of dollars into research and development. Another issue will be getting traction among developers to build upon these models. That has what has made a success of other open-source models, like those from Alibaba.

SK Telecom’s Kim said the goal is to create models that can rival these other companies.

“Our first goal is to create a very strong state-of-the-art open source model and we already have an example of those open source models which are on par in terms of performance with those large tech (players) like OpenAI or Anthropic,” Kim told CNBC.

He added that there will be models of different sizes that can be used by different industries.

An open-source national AI model could also provide benefits by giving businesses across the country access to the latest technology without having to rely on a tech giant from abroad.

Meanwhile, South Korean AI models could be positioned as an alternative to U.S. and Chinese-developed systems.

“Beyond domestic benefits, a proven sovereign AI model presents significant export potential. Just as Korea excelled in memory chips, this could become a valuable product for other nations seeking alternatives to U.S. or Chinese systems, strengthening Korea’s position in the global AI landscape,” Patience said.

The launch of an Instagram feature that details users’ geolocation data illicited backlash from social media users on Thursday.

Meta debuted the Instagram Map tool on Wednesday, pitching the feature as way to “stay up-to-date with friends” by letting users share their “last active location.”  The tool is akin to Snapchat’s Snap Map feature that lets people see where their friends are posting from.

Although Meta said in a blog post that the feature’s “location sharing is off unless you opt in,” several social media users said in posts that they were worried that was not the case.

“I can’t believe Instagram launched a map feature that exposes everyone’s location without any warning,” said one user who posted on Threads, Meta’s micro-blogging service.

Another Threads user said they were concerned that bad actors could exploit the map feature by spying on others.

“Instagram randomly updating their app to include a maps feature without actually alerting people is so incredibly dangerous to anyone who has a restraining order and actively making sure their abuser can’t stalk their location online…Why,” said the user in a Threads post.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri responded to the complaints on Threads, disputing the notion that the map feature is exposing people’s locations against their will.

“We’re double checking everything, but so far it looks mostly like people are confused and assume that, because they can see themselves on the map when they open, other people can see them too,” Mosseri wrote on Thursday. “We’re still checking everything though to make sure nobody shares location without explicitly deciding to do so, which, by the way, requires a double consent by design (we ask you to confirm after you say you want to share).”

Still, some Instagram users claimed that that their locations were being shared despite not opting in to using the map feature.

“Mine was set to on and shared with everyone in the app,” said a user in a Threads post. “My location settings on my phone for IG were set to never. So it was not automatically turned off for me.

A Meta spokesperson reiterated Mosseri’s comments in a statement and said “Instagram Map is off by default, and your live location is never shared unless you choose to turn it on.”

“If you do, only people you follow back — or a private, custom list you select — can see your location,” the spokesperson said.

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