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The traditional four-year Bitcoin cycle may be shifting, but one thing hasn’t changed: the impact of supply shocks. That’s according to Sui Chung, CEO of CF Benchmarks, who joined TheStreet Roundtable with Rob Nelson to break down whether past patterns can still predict the future.

In a world with massive ETF inflows, institutional exposure, and increasing regulation, Bitcoin’s environment has changed radically. But does that mean the famous cycle of price surges and corrections tied to halving events is broken? Nelson asked.

“It's very hard to predict with any certainty whether the old Bitcoin four-year cycle will hold,” Chung said. “Given that there's so many different forces now at play in the market.”

Bitcoin halving is a pre-programmed event that occurs approximately every four years, cutting the reward miners receive for validating transactions in half. This reduces the rate at which new Bitcoin enters circulation, tightening supply. Historically, halvings have preceded major price increases due to the resulting supply shock.

But despite the new players and deeper scrutiny, Chung still sees the halving cycle as structurally powerful.

“Bitcoin is fundamentally a demand and supply driven market,” he explained. “It has no cash flows apart from those involved in mining.”

That, he said, sets it apart from traditional financial assets.

“And so therefore the demand supply is the key catalyst. And as a scarce, limited supply asset, when the cycle was always correlated, it was always driven by the halvings,” he added.

Each halving reduces the rewards paid to miners, effectively cutting new Bitcoin issuance in half. It’s a built-in supply crunch, and Chung believes its effects are too powerful to ignore — even in a more complex environment.

“When supply is restricted, the impacts of that supply restriction [are] very hard to completely overcome through any change in the market participants,” he said.

Chung didn’t go as far as saying the cycle will repeat exactly. But he did lean on a popular adage among Bitcoin veterans: “History may not repeat itself, but it's very likely to rhyme.”

So while the faces, money, and headlines around Bitcoin have changed, the core driver of its booms and busts may still come down to one thing — the block reward halving.

Bitcoin (BTC) was trading at $86,598.33, down 0.0% on the day, but still up 1.5% over the past week and 2.8% in the last month, according to Kraken’s price feeds.