Bitcoin Forum

A brief timeline of crypto history.

2013  Bitcoin reaches a new all time high. Then crashes as silk road is shut down. Ross Ulbricht is arrested. And china bans financial institutions from buying or selling bitcoin.

2017  Bitcoin reaches a new all time high. Then crashes amidst allegations of bitfinex and tether market manipulation of btc. And china reportedly bans cryptocurrency exchanges.

2021  Bitcoin reaches a new all time high. Then crashes. The first event in the crash is attributed to chinese crypto miners being forced to shut down from alleged electricity shortages caused by coal power plant outage.

Based on the above, might it be fair to expect another bitcoin all time high, followed by a crash in 2025?

Will bitcoin naturally be defined by 4 year boom and bust cycles.

Due to its rewards halving being based around approximate 4 year cycles?

We're closer to 3 years from the last crash at the moment though..

I think the bullish parts of the cycles start to increase in time as we go along too (you're attributing a lot to China, I heard nothing memorable of them banning anything in 2017 - probabky fud).

The big crash also was probably 2018 last time? January had a massive red candle while december closed green.

Maybe, but this could also be a case of seeing a pattern where one doesn't exist--and keep in mind that you've only got three data points here.  Plus bitcoin has tended to be quite unpredictable, so it wouldn't surprise me in the least if this 4-year cycle hypothesis doesn't turn out to be true.  If it were true, it would be an easy way to make money since you'd know when the market is going to peak--and I don't believe there's any way to make easy money like that.

Nor am I sure that any of this has to do with the halvings.  This time around I'm almost certain that Elon Musk's actions affected bitcoin's price significantly, whether it was his words or him selling it.  I'd also point out that as of right now it's far too early to call off the bull market.  It's only been just over a month since bitcoin hit its ATH, and while its value has been almost cut in half since then, there's a decent chance (IMO) that it could rebound.  I'd say we'll have a better picture of any emerging trend in a month or two.

In reality, patterns are human constructs that we use to understand reality, but not something that exists. In this case, we see a certain regularity three times in the past and assume it will be the same in the future, but there is no guarantee that the pattern cannot change. Although in this case, it is not just a few isolated numbers and graphs, the reduction in supply due to halvings seems to support this trend to a certain extent. So we can assume that this will be the trend in the future, even if it does not follow a deterministic pattern and may change.

In theory, maybe ^{[great points but not sure about their accuracies]} but in reality, past events might never happen again.

That might be a contributing factor but I'm sure there were and there will be other things that would affect its ^[market] behavior in the future and that could lead to different results.

---

This might come in handy: BTCitcoin's historical corrections from all-time highs (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/bitcoin-historical-corrections-from-all-time-highs/)
^{- Also posted by @bitmover (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5339156.0).}

Most probably yes! I mean that's what the trend is currently showing us! After 2017's dream run, bitcoin crashed to 3k level in 2018 and then after 3 years, we crossed 60k level. So if we do the trend analysis, that's the exact picture we will see!

But I doubt bitcoin will ever reach to 3k level again. As the ATH is increasing its limit, the bottom should also increase its position. So it's safe to assume that the next ATH will be even bigger than 60k and most likely to happen around 2025.

The 2020-2021 trend a bit different though, 2018 crash happened in January while the crash this year is still debatable since the prices are still that high, I would say that this year with more institutional investors and mainstream appeal, I would say that this is a different trend.

Being a cryptocurrency investor since 2012, I guess I have more knowledge when compared to most of the other posters about what happened in 2013/14 and 2017/18. At this point, it will be interesting to analyze what caused the crash in 2018. China had zero contribution to the 2018 dip. What happened was that many of the shitcoins got pumped by 100x or 200x in 2017, due to the overall hype. And after a certain point, the promoters of many of these shitcoins dumped their coins and made the exit. Some of the most infamous cryptocurrency scams (such as PlusToken and OneCoin) also took place during the 2017/18 period. These scams triggered the correction of 2018, which was further exacerbated by various other factors.

Only partially in my opinion. The price of bitcoin is all about supply and demand, and has the peculiarity that very little bitcoin moves in one day compared to the stores available in the accounts that are known to be active.

If you look at the 4 year cycle, you will be looking at the supply side, so you would be missing half of the equation and ignoring the reserves of bitcoin. So, yes the 4 year cycle is short of a self-fulfilled prophecy, but it would mean nothing if it were not for the traction that bitcoin is getting among a wider owner´s base than ever before, and for the investments that are being done through traditional funds and others.

Definitely yes!
What else do you expect from a financial asset that has a limited supply and really unstable demand.
The BTC market is going between FOMO and FUD.There's no stability.
This boom and bust cycle is a great advantage for all the crypto whales,investors and gamblers and a big obstacle towards mass Bitcoin adoption.Small businesses want a stable price,in order to accept BTC payments.Spending a currency,that will become way more valuable tomorrow is nonsense.

Personally I think we would see this cycle come again several times, but it definitelly cannot be for so long happening, but yes definitelly people are waiting for next halving to buy in some tokens and another bull period to happen.
I expect that to be not that pereodical and maybe in a future it would be as a Forex index market more stable and not that volatile

I would not end the story with 2021 so easily by saying that we have reached absolute ATH and that the scenario from 2013 or 2018 is now repeated. For such a conclusion, we should still wait until the end of this year - although we will find out before that, but we will still be able to say that all those who claim that we have entered the bear market, which by them should last until 2024/25, are right or not.

Although this is not just about halving exclusively, it is still a constant that everyone is counting on, and this was no exception this time either. However this year ends, halving 2024 is likely to produce similar effects as in the past - of course if nothing happens in the meantime that would make halving meaningless.

Nope, I don't think so, the prices are going strong this year despite the drop from 60k to 40k. I think that this year is going to be a little bit different than the other previous year, this might be the cycle breaker.

The fact is that supply and demand but the reality is that there are cycles and that is why there is a chance we could end up with the same 4 year cycle over and over again. That supply and demand gets impacted by something else all the time, Elon writes and changes the price, mt.gox was probably the first news and that got it down and ever since that one the price changed a ton as well and that is why there was a big up and down probably at least once a year.

So long story short there is a factual basis on this, sure it is still supply and demand and that is changed constantly as well and that is why we are not really worried that much about the supply and demand when there is a fall because we know that every fall is followed by an increase and every increase is followed by a fall.

I am not sure if 4 years are correct, but it might be. I noticed that financial crisis tend to happen in 10years intervals. But the finance market is much more regulated. For bitcoins and other cryptos it should probably occur more often. One important thing is also the bitcoin having process happens every 4 years. So maybe in the year of having we see higher prices which will then drop afterwards in the next years. But one good thing is that the long term trend is upwards.

Though it is said "Once an accident, twice a coincidence, three times a pattern", strange as it may sound..might it be just a coincidence this time? I just don't see any logical explanation behind these 4-year periods. But what isn't a coincidence is China's involvement in all this. Honestly, up until now, I didn't realize that they were going against crypto all along.
And regarding halving, though it is known that Bitcoin price naturally goes up after each halving, we can see that in all these years the real surge in price was caused rather by something political, social, than technical.

maybe it just happened to happen, but this habit can be used as a reference in a four-year cycle, and after this means, should we be careful because there will be a decline similar to starting in 2018? I think anything can happen, the most important thing is we have to trade safely at all times

Surprisingly China involved in all the incidents. :o

Until now it was 4 year per cycle but lest time we are much sooner than 4 year so probably the next cycle of ATH will be in 2024 middle or towards the end.

This looks interesting, but, honestly, I don't think there is something more to this than mere coincidence. I mean, those things that you mentioned which apparently played a major role in the price movements of Bitcoin didn't take place following a schedule. In no way anybody could have predicted those events to happen. They just happened.

Also, I think it is hard for one to create a technical prediction or a time frame for the price of Bitcoin using fundamentals.

Well, history speaks for itself so I suppose so. Every 4 years does limit the current supply of its Bitcoinhence affecting the market, but honestly, I hardly doubt it's the main reason for the boom and bust of Bitcoin for those cycles. It's more like the situations where Bitcoin goes boom just happen to be in a cycle of 4 years, with those 4 years being a buffer for the boom in the end.

But hey, in the end, this IS Bitcoin we are talking about. I wouldn't entirely be surprised if it suddenly changes its cycle all of a sudden. Ideally, it wouldn't be good to completely base the movement on the 4-year cycles, BUT it is good to take it into account and make decisions using it as a part only.

Isn't this is associated with the Bitcoin Halving process?

I mean whenever the halving occurs it reduces the miner fees and thus also gives out more prices (historic pattern). Not sure if this is to overcome the reduced fiat value to the reduced miner fees or something else. But considering the last cycles this is the definite case.

Last year we had same thing and I am pretty sure we will see it for the next cycle which is on 2024. (Near the time you mentioned).

We really don't know if this is etch in stone though. The market is still fairly young to say that it is defined by a 4 year cycle. Although there's a lot of proponent of it, we might see some changes as we go along the way. We might see one super cycle, or two 3 year bull run, so it's early to say. And as we hit 20 million bitcoin mine in the next 2-3 halvings, things might be different.

I will agree more to this if you say Elon musk tweet was part of the reason for the crash. IMO , the Chinese miners that were forced to shut down hard a major effect on transaction fees, it made the fees extremely high at the time. I remember the price at that time was still close to $60,000. I believe after Elon musk SNL show and tweeting against bitcoin electricity consumption, the fud was every where and soon after that the dumping started. That's my opinion on that.

I also adhere to this theory that the rise in the price of BTC and in the crypto market in general has a cyclical nature and each such cycle is 4 years. As for the next cycle, which ends in 2021, then I believe that the main growth will be at the end of 2021, as in 2017, and the drop that was a few days ago is a forced price drop in order to be able to prices go even higher. Based on the 4-year cycle theory, it can be assumed that the next cycle will begin at the beginning of 2022 and will also come to an end at the end of 2025. But how will it actually be, I'm sure we will see.

Until now I had seen that the BTC market behaves that way, because from 2014 to 2017 I saw that there was an accumulation stage, after 2018 to 2021, but we are not in the uptrend at all because due to the corrections we could be talking. about a sharp drop before a possible reaccumulation stage is generated, which is quite ingenious, in this market we have not had reaccumulation yet.

But since it can be said that the Accumulation stage usually lasts 3 years, it is likely that by the 4th year benefits will already be obtained, this is what also differs from the Stock Market, since in the Stock Market the important movements are usually every 8 to 10 years, this is why the BTC market is so superior to regret that it has no backing.

Well if it would be a regular cycle of the price then it would really be best to HODL it and wait for every 4 years to hit a new ATH and sell,
Then wait for the price to drop down then buy back then wait again for 4 years.
Just like OP I also think that Bitcoin Halving is one of the reason why we experience this kind of cycle but the question is would it remain in this kind cycle? or would this be the last and it would create a new one?

I will not say bitcoin will be naturally Defined by the so-called 4-year boom and bust cycle I think this all happens to be coincidental at the interval you call it and for now many people are already in this market and technology are on the high side. More positive prospective investors will soon join the club so I don't think it will be after another four years before we see another ATH.

Lol every year there is always going to be something bad that is going to happen and cause the price to crash (as people would believe). Funny enough they are always pointing hands at China every time there is a crash like this and all that. And as for whether there is going to be another time like this in the next four years?

Of course there is going to be another time like this in the four years that is coming and that’s because we are going to see another halving that is going to reduce supply and everything will now lead to another ATH price. I never expected it this year because of the coronavirus and also how the price plummeted earlier. So, if it’s going to happen at a time like this, it’s also going to happen again in the future no matter what.

So far this has been true and I think this is going to continue, there is a concept in trading called seasonal trading in which people trade some assets based on the time of the year, commodities like corn and even oil follow this pattern and bitcoin due to its halving creates an expectation that the price will go up in value after each halving, this generates more demand which generates an increase in the price making this a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If so, we can expect to see the bitcoin price crash to the dip in the next 4 years and prepare for that. If we see the history, the bitcoin movements are almost the same, but the price always reaches the new ATH every 4 years, but that is not always guaranteed as the bitcoin price can move wild without knowing where it will go.

But with the popularity of bitcoin now, I think in the next 4 years or the future, the bitcoin movements will not be the same as many companies, people, or even the government can buy bitcoin so that it can make the moves will be different than the previous years. So we need always to be careful to decide and make sure we analyze the market before doing something.

I tend to think that this cycle, that is primarily due to halving mechanism, would be massively impacted by the research on the Stock to Flow, ratio.

PlanB research cannot be unseen:

Stock-to-Flow Model: Modeling Bitcoin's Value with Scarcity (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5191012)

If market realise stock to flow is being priced in, we will pass from a 4 year “boom and bust” cycle, to what Micheal Saylor calls a “supercycle”.

The 2017 fall didn't start because of bitfinex or USDT or anything related to that, in fact it was more of a helpful thing while people were going out, it would have been worse if people got out completely but they kept it in USDT and that was a bit of better thing, easier to get back in, still in crypto space.

The biggest start and problem of 2018 was the fact that mt.gox trustee started to sell tens of thousands of bitcoins and back in those days that was a lot of money, that started it and wasn't the only reason, but with that we dropped from 20k levels (by then dropped to 18 or so) to under 12k levels, after that we had a few more hacks in exchanges and also ICO's all scamming people, all these dropped it to about 7k levels with the bad momentum. Last draw was when Craig Wright sold tens of thousands of bitcoin to get mining power for taking over BCH and failed, that was really horrible.

Its always something to do with the halving mechanism so far but this time it seems to be different ( my own perspective ). I wonder if we will ever get this huge bull run if it wasnt for the covid-19 pandemic. The 10 years US treasury bonds hits below their average return which is why alot of those big guys 'gamble' into cryptocurrencies in general


I hope we do, 100k dream or 1 million dream. Any new ATH would be great

To me, it's only stock to flow.
Yes, the demand driven by the pandemic, the FED brrr and the wealth effect of stick market played a role, but the main driving force hasn't changed since 2010: Stock2Flow explains 95% of the price of bitcoin: I wouldn't be too concerned by the residual 5%.

Im not a firm believer of this Stock to Flow ratio model, well atleast not yet but to be honest it is really convincing. In fact this is my first time to read a detailed explanation about it from your thread. If this model is the holy grail of bitcoin then somewhere between today until 2024/2025, we might hit 100k ( or close to that )

I wonder what would be the driven factor for bitcoin demand if it wasnt for the pandemic

Can't blame people who blame China for causing the market crash, because several times the Chinese government gave negative statements
regarding Bitcoin. Because even now the Chinese government has not been able to accept Bitcoin, so it is very natural that China is one of
the causes for the market crash. As long as the halving is still happening, I believe every 4 years there will be an increase in Bitcoin towards
the new ATH. So history will continue to repeat itself, therefore it is very important for us to prepare before the next halving occurs.
Because in my opinion the opportunity to make a large profit from Bitcoin after the halving happened. So from now on can collect Bitcoin,
so when the next halving occurs we already have quite a lot of Bitcoin.

In fact the bitcoin market is not based on anyone if the demand is high the price goes up. The population of China was much higher in terms of crypto use the amount of its investment has decreased due to the sudden ban the government argued that it was protecting the population from cryptocurrency instability it also sought the power to regulate and tax transactions with cryptocurrencies. It is highly probable that the increased roadblocks in the use of cryptocurrencies by major us banks are driven at least in part with the us government expected to crackdown in the future.

Bitcoin price is based purely like the laws of economics. and maybe this four yearly incident was just a coincidence. more than that, in fact Ellon and China previously gave negative statements which resulted in a decrease in the price of bitcoin, but I think it will rise again, along with increasing demand.

In this case we need to wait for another 4 years for new ATHs... Not so good news

The sample size is still too small to call it at that. Though the intervals are already pretty obvious, I still think that it isn’t enough to satisfy the notion that most people have regarding bull run cycles. It’s a great observation, but certainly not enough evidence and figures to work from in order to call it something that is regular or an accepted pattern.

This bull cycle (if it were to end with a60k top) would be the shortest in history. We're actually at the point of the first breakout followed by a selloff like in 2017 after reaching 3k we fell back to 1.5k. We're now at 60% of the ATH and in 2017 after reaching 300% of the last ATH we fell 50%. Looks familiar?


Take a look at this chart that shows days since bottom in every bull cycle in history.
You'll notice that each cycle took more days and the third cycle was significantly weaker than the second.
https://s3.cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/6b1b222edde82ac874c3c97322d4395a.jpg

This is a chart from last year and we are currently around 900 days into the cycle, so 150 days earlier than 2017 top and very likely at around 200 days before the top of this cycle.
Of course that is only if the cycle theory is really a thing, which i think it is. Mathematically, longer, slower cycles make sense since the number of coins in circulation, market capitalization and the number of users are all increasing.


Not necessarily because the cycles are getting longer. If this one takes 1100 days or more and the bear market begins in the end of 2021, you'll have to wait even longer for the new high.
Good news is that even after 2 years of bear market we'll still be above 20k.

If you will see, there is a bit of similarities on it.
Aside from the fact that this happened every 4 years, the Chinese are always involved in this crashes. China China China.. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

If we will base on the history then it might be that this year will be the year where Bitcoin will reach its ATH. Possible that the $65,000 price is the ATH already or it might go even higher in the next months of 2021.
On the other hand, we might see a super cycle and it might break this trend but the chances of this are very low. I still believe in "History repeats itself".

A cycle that has occurred 4 years bitcoin spike again. Bitcoin appeared in 2009 and has exploded in 2013, 2017 and 2021. If calculated according to this cycle, by 2025 the bitcoin price will reach a new peak. So right now we should invest in bitcoin while it is low and keep it for long. Hopefully this will be an important milestone to success when you buy bitcoin.

But you also have to consider that anything can happen in this market. The adoption is different than in previous years. It may not follow the 4-year cycle but the progress may come early. Who knows? This market is very unpredictable. Either way, we should always be ready for whatever may happen. But one thing, if you are in this market, make sure that you are allotting funds that you can afford. Because if anything goes wrong, your life's savings will not be burned.

Well, first of all, the year 2021 is still not over and we are only approaching its middle, and therefore I would not dare to argue that the rise this year has already ended and it is time to start buying, because the next peak will be only in four years, as well as I am not sure that the exchange rate price will not fall again to lower levels in the near future. I can more or less listen to such conclusions about four-year cycles, but I still do not advise you to rush and announce that all the significant cryptocurrency events have already occurred this year. By no means, by the end of the year, many more interesting things can happen, such as the rise to new levels.

I guess this is the cycle that we all are getting used to since the day Bitcoin started to boom with the bull run. I never see it exceeded it's ATH during those 3 years left before another halving occurred. It seems that investors and other large institutional investors are waiting for this to happen since they knew that more people will be joining in the market and they can easily manipulate if they want to make profit.

Previously these cycles were triggered by the block reward halving events. As you can notice from the charts, the ATH of 2013 and 2017 were achieved in 1 to 1.5 years after the first and second block reward halving respectively. We had another block reward halving on 2020, and therefore we should be expecting another ATH by mid-2021 to end-2021. And I guess that has already happened. The spike was more mild this time, because the impact of block reward halving on the total supply is of a lesser magnitude when compared to the previous such events.

First of all the bull market is not over yet, we need to watch what the market does during the next months before we can declare the bull market over, and even if that is the case we are not going have to wait that long as you can take a position in the market before the halving takes place and everyone is sleeping, then when the market begins to grow up you will be able to capture all the bull market while others are just trying to understand what is it happening.

How strongly do you rely on S2F?

In the past, many said that at the end of the year the price of bitcoin would go up, it was because the behavior in the previous year showed that way. The same is true today, I don't think there is a four-year culture, and that is just a coincidence. and I think the bull market is not necessarily over, hopefully the correction ends soon and bitcoin forms new peaks soon

Personally I think we are following a similar pattern to the one we saw in 2017, we had a halving on 2016 and it took some time for the price to begin to go up but it finally did, then there was a drop in the price and it was not until segwit was approved on October when we saw the bull run making crazy new ATHs, and this is happening again now that the taproot upgrade is coming, and once it is locked in I am sure we are bound to see significant growth just like what happened during 2017.

The crypto market is unpredictable. Who knows, the next all time high might happen even years before the halving. Maybe the halving and the price rise is just a coincidence? Or maybe its because everyone thinks that the price is going to increase, hence everyone invests causing the price to increase. But if you look at the charts, this time it wasn't as much as we expected it to be. The recent price rise was mainly because of huge companies getting into the market.
I doubt they can easily manipulate the market. When many competitors enter the market, it in fact is going to be harder for everyone to manipulate (unless they all decide to unite and mess things up).

It is a good observation and it kinda make sense on how bitcoin keeps on booming out. Before the bull run at 2021, it went on a 4years crisis wherein lots of crypto enthusiasts ended up losing interest with their investment. If ever that's really the case, we should expect another bull run on the next four years. Maybe that is the reason why many people are holding their investments still at the moment, because they are fully aware that another bull run would occur. You just need to be patient and have faith on your investment, no matter what it is, either bitcoin or ethereum, just keep on persevering.

That's an interesting observation, but maybe it's a little far-stretched. The ATH was established around November 2013, December 2017, April 2021. It's 4 years between 2013 and 2017, but a little over 3 years before 2021. And, of course, there's no guarantee that we'll have to wait around 4 years for the next ATH.
I'd also like to add that in 2017, there were some news about South Korea restricting the activities of crypto exchanges. As far as I remember, this was actually the trigger that led to the prices dropping. Here are some (https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/28/bitcoin-drops-11-percent-as-south-korea-moves-to-regulate-cryptocurrency-trading.html) articles from those times (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/11/bitcoin-drops-value-south-korea-trading-ban-cryptocurrencies-tax-gambling) that support this idea. As for 2021, a major factor was Elon Musk's announcement of Tesla stopping accepting bitcoins.