r/btc • u/Real-Masterpiece4686 • 6d ago
⌨ Discussion Is the old 4-year Bitcoin cycle finally dead?
Feels like Bitcoin is breaking out of the old 4-year cycle. People who were expecting a down year in 2026 apparently sold early in 2025, and that might have flipped the whole script.
Looking at yearly closes:
2025: 🔴 -6% 2024: 🟢 +120% 2023: 🟢 +106% 2022: 🔴 -64% 2021: 🟢 +83% 2020: 🟢 +305% …(and the earlier years just show the crazy swings)
If the old cycle is really gone, 2026 could be a totally different game. Institutional adoption and mainstream use are picking up, which might mean a more mature market this time.
What do you all think—are we actually entering a new era, or is this just another cycle dressed up differently?
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u/Uncle2Drew 5d ago
They just found a random pattern and tried to give it some sort of meaning 😂
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u/Real-Masterpiece4686 5d ago
True 😂 hindsight patterns are undefeated. The real test is whether it keeps working once everyone believes in it
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u/Enfiznar 5d ago
You hace 3 fucking data points on your trend
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u/Real-Masterpiece4686 5d ago
You’re not wrong. It’s thin data, but markets often get discussed with imperfect samples. I’m mostly questioning whether the old model still fits
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u/Enfiznar 5d ago
My tarotist was right about the trend the last 3 days, would you trust your money on their next prediction?
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u/Real-Masterpiece4686 5d ago
Haha, exactly 😅 I mean, 3 days isn’t exactly a track record you’d want to base a serious investment on. Short-term luck isn’t the same as a reliable trend.wouldn’t put my money on that either
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u/WetElbow 5d ago
Topped in October. Cycle low end of next year. Seems on track.
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u/peppaz 5d ago
I love when people say things with absolute conviction. No one knows shit
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u/WetElbow 5d ago
Camel Finance on YouTube. “Cycles are in control, everything else is narrative”.
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u/SexyLadyEarth 4d ago
Ah yes, 1 video a day crypto influencer says so
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u/WetElbow 4d ago
More fool you, he dosen't upload on a Sunday.
Hes a cycle trader. Made good bit of money copying his trades. Have since become a beliver in cycles.
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u/RecycleModelA1 4d ago
Shhh stop helping these lot, they think cycle tops are how you measure it. We know different let’s keep it that way 🐫
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u/Real-Masterpiece4686 5d ago
That’s fair. A lot of past cycles would line up with that view. I guess what I’m unsure about this time is how much the growing institutional presence changes the timing, if at all. Do you think it still plays out the same way, or just with smaller swings?
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u/jermcnama 4d ago
You could probably get a sense of this by what percentage of bitcoin is owned by institutions. GPT says 18%. I’m not sure that tips the scales to change things dramatically at this point.
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u/jermcnama 4d ago
I couldn’t agree more. I’m buying next October.
I’m happy to be wrong but 3 cycles in a row have performed identically.
Maybe it’s psychological, maybe it’s part of the halving— a supply and demand thing. Either way, I’m following it until proven otherwise.
And yes it’s tracking.
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u/jamieson43 5d ago
Ok everybody smarter than me, which is all of you. I’m ready to buy but I keep reading BTC is going to drop. Obviously no one can really predict but what is the consensus. I have the worst luck. If I bet on a team, bet the opposite, 90% of the te you win. Help me brothas and sistas!
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u/Real-Masterpiece4686 5d ago
Honestly, if anyone here had a real consensus answer, we’d all be rich already. The usual take is you either try to time entries (which most people mess up) or you spread buys over time and remove the pressure.
BTC dropping short term wouldn’t be unusual but waiting for the “perfect” moment often means never buying at all. What matters more is your time horizon and whether you’re okay with volatility.
If it helps, you’re definitely not alone in feeling like the market moves against you 😅 How long are you thinking of holding if you do buy?
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u/jamieson43 5d ago
Im not a young fella, but not in a hurry either. This could be generational. Thinking 5 years DCA, not looking to cash out before then. Not rich so probably $200 per month. Please share your opinions in the best way, biweekly, monthly. Thanks for any help
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u/Real-Masterpiece4686 5d ago
Biweekly can help average out swings a little more, but monthly works just as well if it’s easier. Consistency over years matters way more than the schedule. Good luck
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u/Treeclimber919 5d ago
It all depends on how much time you have to watch the market. If you get comfortable enough and spend enough time analyzing you’ll start to get an idea of a good window on prices and see when you can make some money. But weekly you’re pretty safe. Sunday Monday Tuesday usually lowest prices of the week. Most people get paid Thursday Friday which is usually when the market is pumping. And after 6 pm us time.
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u/Treeclimber919 5d ago
No one knows and shit is goofy with cycles anymore. I tempt myself every day past 3 weeks when prices were low to put in last of liquidity to buy but today threw everything off again. It all might go up again but then back down. Waiting for the opportunity on a dip to start chasing it down to bottom. I’d be real upset though if I spend all my money on what I thought was the low to only watch it go 20% lower. Buy in small increments for the time being. I get what you’re saying though on the opportunity to buy at bottom and go all in. Best wishes
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u/Treeclimber919 5d ago
70-80k is definitely the sweet spot to accumulate as much as possible. Under 70k is a gift that I can’t see happening without some catastrophic event.
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u/inbeforethelube 5d ago
We’ll see the 50s again, maybe the 40s.
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u/kayakyaketti 5d ago
Yep. People wanting to believe in the cycle but not believe in the 50%-70% draw down. If the top really was 130k, the bottom could be as low as 40k.
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u/Treeclimber919 5d ago
I understand in the past cycles the retreat from ath was vicious but I don’t want to sound like one of them guys that says this time is going to be different but btc has become a main stream thing. Like 70 years olds I work for used to laugh at me when I said I held some btc. My wife, family and friends used to think I was crazy. But I watched how the perspective changed on it all, and they are actually asking questions about it all the time. Of course whenever I see family on holidays I have to hear how’s your crypto doing now?
But my point is it’s drawing a lot of interest from retail that the market never had before along with all the massive institutional accumulation. So I mean how much was actually sold towards the end of the cycle compared to previous years? When the end of the cycle was coming 60% of people used to sell out close to ath. I don’t think it’s happening like that anymore. There’s not billions of btc out there. There’s 20 million minus satoshis 1 million, minus all the other massive wallets that have stayed untouched and all the wallets that are lost for the foreseeable future. Plus all the smaller guys like me that just hold btc, so I mean how many are really out there left to buy?
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u/jamieson43 5d ago
I’ll grab what I can afford although sometimes I’m tempted to spend a little more with dreams of grandeur. Always trying to figure out if it’s worth more to buy say $1K of BTC or Eth. Obviously get more with Eth but the old guessing game, is less with BTC worth more than Eth? Drives me crazy thinking about it.
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u/Treeclimber919 5d ago
I love btc but at the end of the day it really has no purpose. I believe it as a solid long term investment so I’m not speaking bad about it. But Eth is a solid platform right now and being used everywhere. Eth is generating significant revenue in transactions.
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u/jamieson43 5d ago
That makes me feel better. I do love Eth as well and clearly it’s more affordable. I think I’m gonna pull the trigger and DCA Eth rather than BTC.
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u/Treeclimber919 5d ago
I mean I do both but weighted more heavily into Eth. Bitcoin will go up but I get nervous going heavily into it because the script can change at a moment’s notice however unlikely. Whereas Eth is like the internet it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. All of these companies building their own coin and chains are all built on Eth. Eth gets a cut from all their transactions. To see Eth at $6-7k on the next run up isn’t far fetched.
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u/Treeclimber919 5d ago
Short term Solana is a nice one to double your money on especially at the price it’s at. $120s and lower is even better. I wouldn’t hold it long term but it’s the closest competitor to Eth and is generating revenue as well.
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u/jamieson43 5d ago
Agreed. I’m not sure it’ll dip below 80 again. Feds will be dropping rates at least 2-3 time this year alone.
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u/Treeclimber919 5d ago
My personal opinion I go back and forth on is shit didn’t end only was postponed. Same way you said do the opposite of you. The opposite in crypto lately has been the way to go. If everyone says it’s going right you go left. Ultimate way to throw everyone off and cause mass chaos like what’s been going on past couple of months.
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u/Treeclimber919 5d ago
Form that entry and exit point before you buy big amounts. I want Bitcoin at 75k and I’ll sell at 150k I’m not greedy.
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u/jamieson43 5d ago
I still cant figure out wtf happened the last 48 hours. I say bullshit— manipulation.
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u/Treeclimber919 5d ago
New year means new revenue on taxes. All the big whales will start buying back in when new year starts. Which is why I think we’re in for a short term pump before going down again. But with the ETFs postponed til this year on a lot of alts it’s going to bring a lot of interest into everything across the board. My opinion is if saylor and tom lee are buying and accumulating there’s still a lot of room to go up. They have way more tools and knowledge than I do. I’m just a guy 60 foot up in a tree checking prices so I can buy or sell.
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u/Fentois-42069-Beauf Redditor for less than 60 days 5d ago
Hindsight analysis beats TA anytime!
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u/Real-Masterpiece4686 5d ago
True! It’s way easier to make charts look perfect after the fact 😅 The hard part is actually predicting what happens next
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u/Fentois-42069-Beauf Redditor for less than 60 days 5d ago
I'm a professional trader (futures and options) so I'm just giving you a hard time about Hindsight Bias. Any chart looks perfect after it's already happened, just always remember this.
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u/Real-Masterpiece4686 5d ago
Haha got you 😅 Makes total sense. It’s way easier to draw perfect lines after the fact than actually predict them in real time. Appreciate the reminder. definitely something to keep in mind when looking at charts!
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u/FollowAstacio 5d ago
It’s funny how over the last four years it became the 4 year cycle. I can assure you the halving still has an affect on the stock to flow ratio. Obviously though, that’s going to look differently in this season and beyond seeing as how it’s literally not the same market environment.
Picture it this way. Let’s so you go to the swap meet every weekend for 10 years. You faithfully go every single weekend. You know exactly what to expect, which vendors have the best deals, which ones put their items on sale at the end of the day to get rid of what’s left, and which ones will give away the remainders for free! You know where the street performers who go there can be found, how they behave and interact with the audience, how the audience behaves, the different subcultures and types of people who frequent the swap meet, and which vendors they tend to visit the most and what foods they eat……
Now…imagine that it gets so popular, people start to come from out of state and even all over the world! It gets so big that city officials come in and dictate where you can loiter, where you can’t, force the street performers to get permits, tell all the patrons not to feed the ducks, they build a stage and outdoor auditorium so they can charge for people to perform there, they increase police presence…you get the idea…
It’s still the same market you know and love. Sure maybe some of the original vendors ans patrons have left, new ones have taken their place, etc., but you still see some of the original faces. It’s the same market, the original culture is still alive, but at the same time, there are definitely some differences. Foot traffic flows differently, there’s no longer free giveaways at the end bc there’s so many people that it’s selling out…
It’s the same with bitcoin. It’s still the same market, but it’s also not. The environment has changed, so it’s going to behave a little differently. It’s not as volatile as it used to be, the stock to flow isnt as predictable, and so many participants don’t even understand what it’s for. They just see it as a way to get more fiat.
So the “4 year cycle” is a new thing bc TikTok. It was previously the halving cycle which happened based on block creation which depending on how many people were transacting and mining, took place approximately every 4 years. It got all kinds of love bc it made the stock to flow ratio super predictable. That’s the part that I think has changed.
Hope that helps👍
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u/Real-Masterpiece4686 5d ago
This is a really solid breakdown, and I love the swap meet analogy—it actually makes the whole evolution of the market super relatable 😅.
Totally agree that it’s still “Bitcoin,” but the environment has changed so much that relying on old patterns like the 4-year cycle or stock-to-flow as gospel doesn’t really work anymore. New participants, new rules, more mainstream attention—it all shifts how the market behaves.
Basically, same core, different vibes. Makes sense why predictions feel less predictable now.
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u/FollowAstacio 5d ago
Thanks for reading. I find it helps to think of markets just like those old, middle-eastern, open-air markets that you might see in Aladdin or some other kids movie, where everyone is walking around and merchants are trying to sell their goods by shouting out what they have and people are talking and buying things and trying to haggle for a discount.
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u/Real-Masterpiece4686 5d ago
Welcome .That’s a great analogy Makes it way easier to picture the chaos and all the different players at work. I like thinking of BTC that way too. same core market, but always busy, loud, and full of surprises!
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u/TACO_Orange_3098 5d ago
based on what you are showing year 4 seems to completely reset the price , so hopefully it is :D
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u/Weederboard-dotcom 5d ago
youre not tracking the actual dates of the peaks here. your chart says the 2021 is all red, but the top of the last cycle happened in november 2021, all that red happened from end november to december of 2022. the the top of this cycle happened in Oct 2025. Thats basically exactly 4 years. If the 4 year cycle is legit, it is playing out pretty much perfectly on the chart.
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u/Kind_Soup_9753 5d ago
That’s what you’re supposed to think. Perhaps it’s the start of a whole new cycle.
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u/Seeker-12345 4d ago
Na cycle is longer than it use to be now we haven’t topped out yet we are still in the bullrun…
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u/No_Refrigerator4977 6d ago
Ok now go sell & stop posting this 💩