It has become fashionable lately to reject bitcoins four-year cycle – and the inevitable ups and downs it brings – as an anachronism.
Last week, Matt Hougan of Bitwise and Cathie Wood of ARK Invest provided considerable support for the idea of rejecting the four-year cycle. Each highlighted the ETFs and regulatory and institutional acceptance that have integrated bitcoin into the traditional financial system. Bitcoin is no longer a marginal asset and there is no reason for it to follow the same pattern today as it did years ago.
Define cycle
The four-year cycle is a price pattern related to bitcoin halving events, which occur approximately every four years. These halvings reduce the amount of Bitcoin rewarded for mining a block by 50%. It is believed that the 50% reduction will cause a supply shock and cause prices to rise significantly.
After the big bullish move, there is a crash to the 80% area, then a steady rise until the next halving event.
Chart rabble-rousers like to point out the rallies (and subsequent crashes) that occurred after the 2012, 2016, and 2020 halvings, and say that things play out the same way for the 2024 event: the sharp rally that finally peaked in October 2025 above $125,000, and then the bear market—where the market currently is.
Fidelity’s Timmer weighs in
Jurrien Timmer, director of global macro at asset management giant Fidelity, an early adopter of bitcoin among traditional financial circles, sees nothing in his charts that indicates the four-year cycle is dead.
“If we visually align all the bull markets, we can see that the October high of $125,000 after 145 [weeks] of the rally is pretty much what you would expect,” Timmer said earlier this week.
As for what happened next, it would be winter. Timmer noted that subsequent bear markets tend to last about a year. “I have a feeling that 2026 could be a “gap year” (or “gap year”) for bitcoin.” The support, he concluded, is between $65,000 and $75,000.
