What do you mean by a 4 years cycle?

[OsaiEmma]

Hello forum 👋🏻.  Hope we're all doing good. Okay, let's talk about the so called "4 years cycle".

For starters, I believe in the four years cycle, and that's probably because I'm a trader. Traders do often tend to look for patterns and structures in assets movements, and although some members will say that's just an illusion or a myth, they actually do work.

Bitcoin market is same for traders and investors and both can use Bitcoin market cycle for their investment or trading. It's wrong if you say only traders believing in Bitcoin four-year cycle while investors don't believe in it.

I didn't say "only traders believe in Bitcoin four-year cycle and investors don't ". My opening statement has nothing to do with anyone else. The main reason I pointed that out is because I want to discuss patterns and traders often tend to spot those in assets compared to investors.  Some members here in the forum don't believe in it because they're mostly hodler.

Note: I'm a hodler too, but I also trade perp and spot from time to time.

So it most profitable for long term investors and not traders. So check very well if you truly admires the 4 years cycle event because you are a trader or an investor.

Understanding market cycles and trend is the most valuable skill for every single trader. If we can Understand every single asset trends and cycle as we do Bitcoin, forex trading will not be as difficult. The main reason I stopped forex and focused on Bitcoin trading mostly is because it is easy to spot the trend and it's movement is very clear. Although gold is somewhat similar but it has too many manipulations.

So yes! I'm a trader (but also a hodler) and understanding the four-years cycle is very important to me.

So why do you think people speculate the halving will cause price to increase?

If you claim there is nothing about Bitcoin that creates these seasons, and you go ahead to say their speculations on price increase based on halving causes the season, then where does the halving they speculate on come from?

Is the halving not a mechanism hard-coded in Bitcoin?

People speculate because that is what people do with financial instruments. When the Strait of Hormuz was blocked, people speculated that the cost of oil would go up. When a publicly traded company acquires another company, people speculate that the stock price of that company will go up. When the supply of any product is reduced, if the demand remains the same, the price will go up. This is something that happens to any other asset, not because it was hard-coded in Bitcoin.
The halving was hard-coded, but the 4-year cycle was not. If people don't sell in mass when Bitcoin peaks, then there will be no bear season. A time can come when so many people don't sell their bitcoin when the price peaks, it doesn't mean the price will not fall, but there won't be a bear market.

People speculate over a lot of things in Bitcoin. Right now, people are speculating about the Clarity Act. People speculated about ETFs, people speculated about Donald Trump winning the election. All these are not hard coded into Bitcoin, they are just economic behaviors and so is people's reaction to the halving.
Like I've already said, the halving is hard coded, but the 4 year cycle is not. If people don't react a certain way to it, then we won't have a cycle, but no matter how bitcoin performs, there will be a halving.

We're going in circles here my brother. I'm saying, the halving event creates the speculation, the speculation creates the cycle, and you said the exact same thing in your previous reply. In other words, if there is no halving, there won't be a cycle too, right?

You have clearly pointed out that supply and other factors surrounding an asset gives rise to speculation. It is not different from what I'm saying. A mechanism in Bitcoin is causing this 4 years cycle, it's like a ripple effect, casualty (cause-and-effect).

Anyway, these are just hypothetical situations. And besides, we're saying the same thing in a roundabout way.

[Ahli38]

The 4-Year Cycle refers to Bitcoin’s price movements related to its halving. And this four-year cycle typically is compared to Bitcoin’s price movements or even those of other altcoins. However it remains uncertain whether this four-year cycle will follow the same price pattern in future cycles. So I personally think we should be prepared for a shift in the pattern during the next cycle. And perhaps we may still see the potential for a Bitcoin price surge around the halving cycle. On the other hand the halving cycle is usually accompanied by positive news, where large amounts of smart money begin flowing into cryptocurrencies which further fuels price surges in the crypto market. While we can’t clearly predict exactly what will happen in the next four-year cycle then I think we can take advantage of it by investing early during a bear market like this currently and even choosing Bitcoin to earn profit around the next cycle.

[Lida93]

These buys (bullish trend) don't happen immediately or exactly at the point of halving, wise traders start accumulating little by little over a 12 - 18 months period pending the event, positioning themselves before the big event so when it is time they'll be in so much profit. And then the process is repeated over and over again.

What should be known about bitcoin cycle is that the historical cycle of bitcoin is not rigid but flexible, the new ATH that was reached before the halving is a background to that fact, otherwise there was no how an ETF approval could have interrupted the historical process if it were that programmatic as some people refers it to be.

With how the past 4 cycles has occurred with ATH made in each of these events, people (investors) have not only taken a timely note on when to get in for profit but also when to get out with profit made from gradual/chunk accumulations.

[Zlantann]

I don't think that we will see a repetition of last circle halving this time because it will be difficult for bitcoin to pump above $126k without any big event that will influence the price like we had the lunch of bitcoin ETF last circle.

However, no one knows for sure if the price of bitcoin will be able to create a new ATH before the halving because the market is unpredictable and more investors and institutions will still adopt bitcoin.

The ETF approval made the price of Bitcoin skyrocket before the halving, and the US elections sustained it. Trump was campaigning with Bitcoin, telling the world how he would set up a reserve and turn the US into the crypto capital of the world. These promises brought more attention to Bitcoin, and the price kept growing after he won the election. The US president even claimed that he made Bitcoin hit $100k.

I don't see Bitcoin hitting another ATH before the next halving. I might be wrong buy the world economy doesn't look promising. Maybe it could happen if the US and other big economies begin to stockpile Bitcoin as a reserve currency or asset.

[d5000]

The cycles are: 2011 - 2015, 2015 - 2019 , 2019 - 2023, 2023 - till date

Of course you can see it that way, but even then: in 2013 you have an 80% crash between April and June (260$ to 50$). So you actually have two clear bottoms in this cycle. What I'm saying is that the first cycle, you can measure it like you want, is not "playing by the rules" that were set up by "cyclists" later. The market was very immature back then.

If you count from top to top you can actually "make the most" of the cycle theory, because the 2013-17 and 2017-21 bull-bear cycles were indeed quite "regular". While if the first "regular" cycle starts in 2015 (or 2016, if you count "from halving to halving"), then you already are on thin ice with the cycle hypothesis because you have only two complete cycles, which can simply be anecdotical evidence

Well you're right, the last one is inconclusive but it's obvious it will be.

This is the typical crystal ball, sorry Nobody can predict the future. And according to your measuring above the "current cycle" still will last for a complete year.

As you rightfully said, the rate of supply dropped but marginally the rate of demand increased, that's why the price of Bitcoin does increase the way it does. If this is not scarcity, then what is?

No, I haven't said anything about demand. The halving cycle (this one does exist ) only decreases the supply increase.

Demand cannot be generated by an algorithm. In Bitcoin, it is mostly driven by sentiment, because we have no really good theory about its price (TAM, Metcalfe's Law etc. are all incomplete, and others like S2F are complete pseudoscience, never were peer-reviewed ). Cyclists do influence sentiment, and so they can create demand. But that is the self-fulfilling prophecy theory which I fully support and which I consider the main reason for the relatively regular cyclic behavior in 2013-21.

The adoption curve increases often, so dropping the rate of supply is a good strategy to create scarcity, no? Even if demand rate remains at a baselin; say, 50M demand every year; and the supply rate remains the same too at 2M coins every year, then demand alone will determine how scarce the commodity will be.

Okay here you actually have a point: if demand increases in the same rate than the supply increase, and then a halving hits, then you will indeed have a demand surplus.

But this linear adoption curve lacks evidence. You could say the long term price evolution hints at it, but the problem is: sentiment is playing a much larger role than a supply decrease of one (2024 halving) or 2-3 (2020 halving) percentage points. Sentiment influences also long term holders, i.e. the whole >20 million supply, while the halvings only affect the (now tiny) amount created by miners newly every year (around 165k coins yearly).

The first halving indeed had a large impact on supply increase. In late 2012 10.5 million coins were mined at a rate of 2.6 million per year. The drop from 2.6 to 1.3 million thus was indeed a very likely trigger for the 2013 bull market. Also because many people were still mining at home with GPUs or even CPUs, but the latecomers had to experience that this was becoming very slow after the halving. And thus, if they wanted to participate with the emerging rally, they had to buy Bitcoins.

Cool, now the users will be scrambling to stash as much as they can.

No, there is no fighting for the new coins. There is demand for all coins of the supply, but all coins of the supply also can be sold

Bitcoin and most assets out there are highly speculative, but the halving creates a sense of direction. Saying the halving has much less incidence than speculation in Bitcoin is like saying NFP news has much less incidence to USD pairs in forex whenever it is released. Just like the NFP, the halving creates room for speculation.

Here I'm with you. The self-fulfilling prophecy theory again

And yet such massive news that was incredibly hyped didn't change the timeline or completely reverse the trend; it went back to test the top, creating a double top, and reversed back downwards. Meanwhile, this news only caused a 2-month rally, still holding up with the cycle's timeline. [...] You said above that El Salvador changed the narrative, and now you claim it also contributed to the sell.

I already explained why, just connect the dots:

- The 2021 announcement of "legal tender" adoption created massive hype and managed to reverse the bear market triggered by the China ban. Without El Salvador, we would never have had even two complete "cycles"
- The adoption in El Salvador was wonky. It was from September 2021 on if I remember correctly. So the "introduction hype" managed to last 2 months more, until the high in November. But then the first negative news appeared, like that most people sold their Chivo holdings. This contributed that the "narrative change" was not sustainable. So the first profit taking wave of late 2021/early 2022, which normally would have caused only a dip, was able to sustain the bearish direction because El Salvador didn't help anymore. I don't think that was the only trigger for the bear market. Without Terra/Luna, until mid-2022 the bullish sentiment could have taken over again, but Terra/Luna was imo the definitive "death blow" for the bull market. And the news in El Salvador kept worsening, everybody laughed about Bukele and their melting "Bitcoin treasure" ...

I'm not saying news doesn't affect price, I'm saying it doesn't control the trend.[...]
Okay, so which news caused the 2023 rally?

In a sentiment-driven asset like Bitcoin, they can in my opinion indeed trigger trend changes. That's what happened in 2021/2022.

In this thread I have already analysed months ago which news could have been strong enough for such a sentiment change. Of course, profit taking waves and bubbles are also a big factor.

To answer the question about the 2023 rally: the price was in a very low territory most of the year, but there were no major negative news after FTX, so it stabilized and slowly hope was returning. But the big rally only started when the ETFs appeared.

If we claim macro-economic news is the driving force behind these trends, why didn't [the FTX] news cause a major shift in trend? Why did the price instead keep to a structured pattern and timeline despite this news?

News can influence the sentiment only for a relatively short time. But they can trigger massive sell-offs which hit sentiment, or on the other hand, increase the demand. If this sentiment hit is sustainable, then the trend can perpetuate.

The 2022 bear, as I already wrote, was not triggered by a single event but a sequence of at least three events: Terra/Luna, the disappointing adoption in El Salvador, and then FTX. In addition, there was a selloff triggered by profit taking after the massive gains in 2021. Overbought and oversold conditions are the other major factor in trend changes. And there is also the self fulfilling prophecy. The "cycle theory" was around since at least 2020, I think I even saw it earlier (2018 perhaps?), because the massive bull markets in 2013 and 2017 were exactly 4 years away, like the halvings, and yeah then people recognized a "pattern" and traded it.

So no, what I'm saying is not that news are everything. But instead that news are one of at least three important factors that can determine the sentiment and thus the trend of a year or even longer.

Appreciate your detailed answer anyway

[OsaiEmma]

These buys (bullish trend) don't happen immediately or exactly at the point of halving, wise traders start accumulating little by little over a 12 - 18 months period pending the event, positioning themselves before the big event so when it is time they'll be in so much profit. And then the process is repeated over and over again.

What should be known about bitcoin cycle is that the historical cycle of bitcoin is not rigid but flexible, the new ATH that was reached before the halving is a background to that fact, otherwise there was no how an ETF approval could have interrupted the historical process if it were that programmatic as some people refers it to be.

With how the past 4 cycles has occurred with ATH made in each of these events, people (investors) have not only taken a timely note on when to get in for profit but also when to get out with profit made from gradual/chunk accumulations.

Exactly, I completely agree with you. The cycle is not rigid, it can play out differently in every cycle. If it were exactly the same, it would've been so boring.

And besides, humans emotion evolves, plus more adoption and variables. So it must vary.

The cycles are: 2011 - 2015, 2015 - 2019 , 2019 - 2023, 2023 - till date

Of course you can see it that way, but even then: in 2013 you have an 80% crash between April and June (260$ to 50$). So you actually have two clear bottoms in this cycle. What I'm saying is that the first cycle, you can measure it like you want, is not "playing by the rules" that were set up by "cyclists" later. The market was very immature back then.

If you count from top to top you can actually "make the most" of the cycle theory, because the 2013-17 and 2017-21 bull-bear cycles were indeed quite "regular". While if the first "regular" cycle starts in 2015 (or 2016, if you count "from halving to halving"), then you already are on thin ice with the cycle hypothesis because you have only two complete cycles, which can simply be anecdotical evidence

Market cycles are usually trough-to-trough and not put-to-put, so it is right to calculate it from one bottom to the next. Indeed the first cycle is a bit different from the subsequent ones because the market was still young, but it is a cycle nevertheless. Each cycles don't need to look exactly the same; some cycles bottomed above the previous cycle ATH while some below, but they maintain similar structures and timeline.

Well you're right, the last one is inconclusive but it's obvious it will be.

This is the typical crystal ball, sorry Nobody can predict the future. And according to your measuring above the "current cycle" still will last for a complete year.

You're right, so I reserve my comment  , only time will tell

As you rightfully said, the rate of supply dropped but marginally the rate of demand increased, that's why the price of Bitcoin does increase the way it does. If this is not scarcity, then what is?

No, I haven't said anything about demand. The halving cycle (this one does exist ) only decreases the supply increase.

Demand cannot be generated by an algorithm. In Bitcoin, it is mostly driven by sentiment, because we have no really good theory about its price (TAM, Metcalfe's Law etc. are all incomplete, and others like S2F are complete pseudoscience, never were peer-reviewed ). Cyclists do influence sentiment, and so they can create demand. But that is the self-fulfilling prophecy theory which I fully support and which I consider the main reason for the relatively regular cyclic behavior in 2013-21.

To clear the misunderstanding, when I said "as you rightfully said", I didn't mean the demand part after the but: that part was my own statement, I was talking about the reduction in the rate of supply from 2% to 1% which you mentioned in your previous reply.

Yes, demand cannot be generated from an algorithm. And I said this:

The mechanism can't account for who will adopt the asset, it can only account for the asset itself, thus creating the disinflationary mechanism that creates a sense of scarcity as long as baseline demand persists.

I'm not saying the rate of demand is programmed in the product, I'm saying the disinflationary mechanism has a potential to make demand appear more than supply, thus fulfilling the definition of scarcity.

The adoption curve increases often, so dropping the rate of supply is a good strategy to create scarcity, no? Even if demand rate remains at a baselin; say, 50M demand every year; and the supply rate remains the same too at 2M coins every year, then demand alone will determine how scarce the commodity will be.

Okay here you actually have a point: if demand increases in the same rate than the supply increase, and then a halving hits, then you will indeed have a demand surplus.

But this linear adoption curve lacks evidence. You could say the long term price evolution hints at it, but the problem is: sentiment is playing a much larger role than a supply decrease of one (2024 halving) or 2-3 (2020 halving) percentage points. Sentiment influences also long term holders, i.e. the whole >20 million supply, while the halvings only affect the (now tiny) amount created by miners newly every year (around 165k coins yearly).

You are absolutely right; afterall, Bitcoin is a highly speculative asset. But what I'm saying is the mechanism in the asset (supply rate halving) which creates disinflation is the front-runner cause of this speculation/sentiment.

Don't get me wrong, I believe news are also a contributing factor, but what largely contribute to it is the halving mechanism.

Cool, now the users will be scrambling to stash as much as they can.

No, there is no fighting for the new coins. There is demand for all coins of the supply, but all coins of the supply also can be sold

I know there is no fighting for new coins  . That's just being used there figuratively.

Bitcoin and most assets out there are highly speculative, but the halving creates a sense of direction. Saying the halving has much less incidence than speculation in Bitcoin is like saying NFP news has much less incidence to USD pairs in forex whenever it is released. Just like the NFP, the halving creates room for speculation.

Here I'm with you. The self-fulfilling prophecy theory again

You might call it that, I call it investors having sentiment based on the hard-coded mechanism of the asset.

And yet such massive news that was incredibly hyped didn't change the timeline or completely reverse the trend; it went back to test the top, creating a double top, and reversed back downwards. Meanwhile, this news only caused a 2-month rally, still holding up with the cycle's timeline. [...] You said above that El Salvador changed the narrative, and now you claim it also contributed to the sell.

I already explained why, just connect the dots:

- The 2021 announcement of "legal tender" adoption created massive hype and managed to reverse the bear market triggered by the China ban. Without El Salvador, we would never have had even two complete "cycles"
- The adoption in El Salvador was wonky. It was from September 2021 on if I remember correctly. So the "introduction hype" managed to last 2 months more, until the high in November. But then the first negative news appeared, like that most people sold their Chivo holdings. This contributed that the "narrative change" was not sustainable. So the first profit taking wave of late 2021/early 2022, which normally would have caused only a dip, was able to sustain the bearish direction because El Salvador didn't help anymore. I don't think that was the only trigger for the bear market. Without Terra/Luna, until mid-2022 the bullish sentiment could have taken over again, but Terra/Luna was imo the definitive "death blow" for the bull market. And the news in El Salvador kept worsening, everybody laughed about Bukele and their melting "Bitcoin treasure" ...

Ok let's talk about the now. After the collapse of FTT, we all agreed that ETFs and Trump drove the price up, so what brought the price down? This is still not clear to me. I know we will say a whole lot of factors, but I believe it is simply just over-saturation of the up trend, and the market adhering to the timeline based on the halving event.

Maybe you'll disagree, that's fine. So let's talk about the positive news that came up in this bear market but failed to reverse the trend:
There have never been a time in the history of Bitcoin's cycles where the adoption rate of a bear market is higher than its preceding bull market's adoption rate. The level of adoption is in its ATH right now. ETFs and large institutions bought a lot of Bitcoin earlier this year and yet the trend failed to reverse. A lot of positive news like SEC fast approval of crypto ETFs and so many others. And yet the price kept dipping.

The funny thing is the coldcard case (although it's a sad incident): I placed a sell trade and placed my SL above a support line. Price went up to the support line even after the coldcard case before going back down, and it isn't even an aggressive sell. This case should've caused a serious FUD in the market, but we saw little negative impact. From my own observation, it had no impact at all cause price moved as it should.

My main point of contention is that, if news is the front-runner cause of the cycles and trends, why are some news affecting the trend and some aren't: some news can change the trend while some couldn't despite being a major news.

My conclusion is, news isn't the main driving force of trend change, the halving is.

For clarity: trends are the chart representation of sentiments and speculations of traders and investors. That's why I said, the halving has a major control over the trend.

So no, what I'm saying is not that news are everything. But instead that news are one of at least three important factors that can determine the sentiment and thus the trend of a year or even longer.

Wow, finally we both spoke the same language  
This is exactly what I'm saying also.
Thank you so much for this wonderful exchange, I really enjoyed it. If there are more points and opinion to be shared, I'd really love to hear them.

Appreciate your detailed answer anyway

It's a pleasure and I appreciate you too sir.

[Anthony Bill]

Unless you don't know that Bitcoin is unpredictable, that will make you think in that way. Just take a look of this year dump and pump then you will know that there will be chang soon that will make the price of Bitcoin to dump more or pump higher above the current price $62,000.

[Popkon6]

Unless you don't know that Bitcoin is unpredictable, that will make you think in that way. Just take a look of this year dump and pump then you will know that there will be chang soon that will make the price of Bitcoin to dump more or pump higher above the current price $62,000.

Look at the past halving charts, every time after the halving, the Bitcoin bull market started. And at that time the price of Bitcoin increased greatly, touching the highest ever high, but according to that chart, now is the time for Bitcoin to correct and it has been proven. However, before reaching the next halving season, there is an opportunity to invest in Bitcoin, which is the current time, so at this time the maximum opportunity to invest in Bitcoin has been created.
However, this year may be the last chance for the Bitcoin price to be dumped, because the demand for Bitcoin is increasing, so it is natural that the price of Bitcoin will also increase.

[purple_sparkles]

Unless you don't know that Bitcoin is unpredictable, that will make you think in that way. Just take a look of this year dump and pump then you will know that there will be chang soon that will make the price of Bitcoin to dump more or pump higher above the current price $62,000.

Look at the past halving charts, every time after the halving, the Bitcoin bull market started. And at that time the price of Bitcoin increased greatly, touching the highest ever high, but according to that chart, now is the time for Bitcoin to correct and it has been proven. However, before reaching the next halving season, there is an opportunity to invest in Bitcoin, which is the current time, so at this time the maximum opportunity to invest in Bitcoin has been created.
However, this year may be the last chance for the Bitcoin price to be dumped, because the demand for Bitcoin is increasing, so it is natural that the price of Bitcoin will also increase.

I think we may see another significant drop in Bitcoin’s price sometime this fall, and it would be a great opportunity to take advantage of it. There is still plenty of time before bitcoin starts gaining momentum again, so there’s an opportunity to accumulate it at a good price. However, I don’t think DCA should only be used when the price is falling. I usually use this strategy throughout the entire cycle, except for roughly a one- to two-month period when bitcoin is reaching new highs. During that period, I prefer to gradually sell some of my Bitcoin so that I can later buy back a larger amount when the price drops again.

[M47AK16]

Look at the past halving charts, every time after the halving, the Bitcoin bull market started. And at that time the price of Bitcoin increased greatly, touching the highest ever high, but according to that chart, now is the time for Bitcoin to correct and it has been proven. However, before reaching the next halving season, there is an opportunity to invest in Bitcoin, which is the current time, so at this time the maximum opportunity to invest in Bitcoin has been created.
However, this year may be the last chance for the Bitcoin price to be dumped, because the demand for Bitcoin is increasing, so it is natural that the price of Bitcoin will also increase.

I think we may see another significant drop in Bitcoin’s price sometime this fall, and it would be a great opportunity to take advantage of it. There is still plenty of time before bitcoin starts gaining momentum again, so there’s an opportunity to accumulate it at a good price. However, I don’t think DCA should only be used when the price is falling. I usually use this strategy throughout the entire cycle, except for roughly a one- to two-month period when bitcoin is reaching new highs. During that period, I prefer to gradually sell some of my Bitcoin so that I can later buy back a larger amount when the price drops again.

If the four-year cycle repeats itself, and every single piece of evidence shows proof that it does, then we can safely say that yeah, we are going to see another drop without a doubt. Of course it is not that easy, because we can't really make that much of a change that easily, but the reality is that another drop is going to happen. We should realise that things are not that difficult; people think that we need to really look into things and research very carefully and come up with delicate results, when in reality it is quite obvious that things just repeat themselves, and you just need to be there and take it.

We will have another drop, late Q3 or early Q4 probably, and that means we can buy there. Then, in 2028 we will have another halving, which means price will go up, and in 2029 we will have a big bull run, and price will reach a new all-time high. We all know this; use it, get profit; it's that simple, nothing more than that. I get that it may not be easy, but it can be done.

[KingsDen]

With how the past 4 cycles has occurred with ATH made in each of these events, people (investors) have not only taken a timely note on when to get in for profit but also when to get out with profit made from gradual/chunk accumulations.

There will always be;
Catalyst,
Distractions,
And Fomo at every cycle, making the market to trap people.

For instance, last cycle, I was decieve by CZ and co who said that we have entered super cycle and the bitcoin market will no longer pay respect to the 4 years cycle. That was how the market crashed on me.

[lionheart78]

That's why I said from the get go, the cycle is anchored around the halving. That mechanism triggers a reaction in investors that influences the demand and supply curve of Bitcoin, and since the mechanism is periodically within a specific time frame, the supply and demand curve happens in the same way in a cycle-like manner.

Yes, it has been observed that the halving is the anchor of the 4 year cycle pattern of the Bitcoin market.  As you stated, the halving triggers the hype of scarcity, most hype are build this halving reason. Months or years after, Bitcoin market activity surge and this makes the emotion favorable to the market by triggering FOMO.  With this we can see an uptrend price of Bitcoin, then eventually recording a new all-time-high.

But I wonder if this halving effect will be maintained as the halving impact becomes less and less due to the halving being almost ignorable, especially when Bitcoin hits the halving reward of less than .01 BTC.  Would the four-year cycle pattern cease?  I think it will happen one day.

[Rgram]

The cycles are: 2011 - 2015, 2015 - 2019 , 2019 - 2023, 2023 - till date

Of course you can see it that way, but even then: in 2013 you have an 80% crash between April and June (260$ to 50$). So you actually have two clear bottoms in this cycle. What I'm saying is that the first cycle, you can measure it like you want, is not "playing by the rules" that were set up by "cyclists" later. The market was very immature back then.

If you count from top to top you can actually "make the most" of the cycle theory, because the 2013-17 and 2017-21 bull-bear cycles were indeed quite "regular". While if the first "regular" cycle starts in 2015 (or 2016, if you count "from halving to halving"), then you already are on thin ice with the cycle hypothesis because you have only two complete cycles, which can simply be anecdotical evidence

Taking a position that seeks to understand,

The “regular cycle” like you put it; is that to mean that, we can only get that in the event that the transition from bull-bears and vice versa would be regarded as complete when we have a significant crash, marking the point about the 80% price mark as it did happen in 2013?

Or perhaps you did mean it a little differently because, I’m often stock with the idea of a bull or bear dominated market season.

[d5000]

Indeed the first cycle is a bit different from the subsequent ones because the market was still young, but it is a cycle nevertheless. Each cycles don't need to look exactly the same; some cycles bottomed above the previous cycle ATH while some below, but they maintain similar structures and timeline.

My point was not that, but the fact that there were two clear "troughs" with -80-85%: mid-2013 ($50, after the rally up to $250) and 2014/15 ($150, after the rally up to $1100). The 2014/15 trough was longer while the 2013 one looked more like a short dip, but nevertheless the April 2013 crash felt like a drastic trend change, and you could have lost almost all your capital if you traded it wrong. So with the same right that you could say that there was a 2011-15 cycle, I could say that there were two: 2011-13 and 2013-15.

I'm not saying the rate of demand is programmed in the product, I'm saying the disinflationary mechanism has a potential to make demand appear more than supply, thus fulfilling the definition of scarcity.

Yes "appear" is true, but you still need the sentiment to align.

My main point is that the halving driven "demand push" was and is weaker in every cycle. It is thus likely that the "sentiment driven" demand/supply changes already since 2020, and maybe even 2016, are more important than the halving events.

For example, I made a little calculation in 2024, when there were a series of remarkable crashes in the middle of the year. Nothing too harsh, but there were 15-20% dips in a single day. In these events, more than 100,000 coins were sold (in the sense that they were taken away from the buy orders, not the buy/sell operations). One of these days saw a "selling surplus" of roughly 150,000 coins. This were almost all the coins created in a whole year after the 2024 halving. And the dips were all sentiment driven.

I only wanted to add this to illustrate my point - and for these reasons, I'm really not sure that I still can recommend people to trade these cycles. Maybe the current one has still a probabilty of more than 50% to work, because "all stars aligned" between late 2025 and now, and the "cyclist prophecy" is still strong.

Ok let's talk about the now. After the collapse of FTT, we all agreed that ETFs and Trump drove the price up, so what brought the price down? This is still not clear to me. I know we will say a whole lot of factors, but I believe it is simply just over-saturation of the up trend, and the market adhering to the timeline based on the halving event.

I agree with the oversaturation (massive profit taking in overbought conditions), but the "adhering to the timeline" was also accompanied by the "prophecy" effect. But there was also another factor: I think people expected too much from the "Bitcoin Reserve" announced by Trump. They thought the US would at least buy actively some hundreds of thousands. That narrative was very widespread in late 2024 and early 2025. I was skeptic about that, but many were not. They thought Bitcoin had already achieved the status of gold for central banks. We're quite away from that (and I think this is not bad).

And I think the downtrend is also a reaction to the fact that Trump is now highly unpopular in the US. The first major politician who used Bitcoin in election propaganda. That's not necessarily bad for Bitcoin but it is not exactly what people need to fall into "supercycle euphoria".

There have never been a time in the history of Bitcoin's cycles where the adoption rate of a bear market is higher than its preceding bull market's adoption rate. The level of adoption is in its ATH right now. ETFs and large institutions bought a lot of Bitcoin earlier this year and yet the trend failed to reverse. A lot of positive news like SEC fast approval of crypto ETFs and so many others. And yet the price kept dipping.

I don't remember any news that were that important to really trigger a trend reversal. "Other crypto ETFs" are not that important, the main news was the acceptance in late '23/early '24. Repeating news are usually weak.

The trend could however have reversed if we hadn't seen the famous "Saylor dip". When the price crashed from 83,000 or so back to 57,000, many people were convinced that Strategy was about to go bankrupt and would have to sell all the 800,000 Bitcoins.

Both this and the "millionaire Bitcoin reserve" were typical exaggerations of panic and FOMO phases. But they were based on news.

The funny thing is the coldcard case (although it's a sad incident): I placed a sell trade and placed my SL above a support line. Price went up to the support line even after the coldcard case before going back down, and it isn't even an aggressive sell. This case should've caused a serious FUD in the market, but we saw little negative impact. From my own observation, it had no impact at all cause price moved as it should.

I didn't even know what Coldcard was until they were hacked, and only after the fact I learned that it was a highly promoted product and very popular among Bitcoin maxis

Yes one could argument that it is negative news for Bitcoin as a whole, as a lot of people could distrust self custody and simply sell, in theory. But we are already in oversold conditions I think. There is massive support around the 60k area it seems. In these conditions it is difficult to push the price further down. It has to be catastrophic news, and that's imo not the case. The outcome is even highly positive: the Bitcoin community is now aware of the threat and the Red Team has already massively scanned wallets to find vulnerabilities. On the whole, the software ecosystem is getting stronger. And the stolen BTC were less than 2000 until now, many hacks in the past that had no incidence at all on the price evolution were much more massive.

I think however, without Coldcard, it is possible that the BTC price would already fight again for 70,000$, instead of dipping below 63k.

My main point of contention is that, if news is the front-runner cause of the cycles and trends, why are some news affecting the trend and some aren't: some news can change the trend while some couldn't despite being a major news.

I don't know if you read the thread I linked where I speculate about that. I think there are news that really could hint about a new adoption pattern, like for example the Trump news in late 2024, where people thought there was a new era of "central banks becoming Bitcoin bulls". The ETFs are a case where such a news indeed changed the adoption pattern. The "Saylor dip" caused massive fear due to the possibility of a sale of almost 1 million BTC. There were people that thought this could bring BTC back to $10,000 or lower, and that would have completely changed the bullish narrative.

While Coldcard ... as I wrote, it's 2000 BTC or so until now. It's really a small amount, and the "real outcome" -> better security practices -> seems to be positive.

[OsaiEmma]

That's why I said from the get go, the cycle is anchored around the halving. That mechanism triggers a reaction in investors that influences the demand and supply curve of Bitcoin, and since the mechanism is periodically within a specific time frame, the supply and demand curve happens in the same way in a cycle-like manner.

Yes, it has been observed that the halving is the anchor of the 4 year cycle pattern of the Bitcoin market.  As you stated, the halving triggers the hype of scarcity, most hype are build this halving reason. Months or years after, Bitcoin market activity surge and this makes the emotion favorable to the market by triggering FOMO.  With this we can see an uptrend price of Bitcoin, then eventually recording a new all-time-high.

But I wonder if this halving effect will be maintained as the halving impact becomes less and less due to the halving being almost ignorable, especially when Bitcoin hits the halving reward of less than .01 BTC.  Would the four-year cycle pattern cease?  I think it will happen one day.

Honestly, I really don't know. But your assumption is the same as mine especially if we record more adoption and demand increases rapidly.

The cycles are: 2011 - 2015, 2015 - 2019 , 2019 - 2023, 2023 - till date

Of course you can see it that way, but even then: in 2013 you have an 80% crash between April and June (260$ to 50$). So you actually have two clear bottoms in this cycle. What I'm saying is that the first cycle, you can measure it like you want, is not "playing by the rules" that were set up by "cyclists" later. The market was very immature back then.

If you count from top to top you can actually "make the most" of the cycle theory, because the 2013-17 and 2017-21 bull-bear cycles were indeed quite "regular". While if the first "regular" cycle starts in 2015 (or 2016, if you count "from halving to halving"), then you already are on thin ice with the cycle hypothesis because you have only two complete cycles, which can simply be anecdotical evidence

Taking a position that seeks to understand,

The “regular cycle” like you put it; is that to mean that, we can only get that in the event that the transition from bull-bears and vice versa would be regarded as complete when we have a significant crash, marking the point about the 80% price mark as it did happen in 2013?

Or perhaps you did mean it a little differently because, I’m often stock with the idea of a bull or bear dominated market season.

Every market cycle is measured from one bottom to the next. If a market reaches an ATH and then crashes let's say 80% and increases and crashes again. The cycle will be measured from the first crash to the next. But what's most important is that it is within a long period of time and not just intermittently.

Market cycles usually have 4 phases: Accumulation (first bottom), markup (bull run), distribution (ATH),  markdown (bear season).

So, intermittent up down movement during any of these phases is not a cycle.

Indeed the first cycle is a bit different from the subsequent ones because the market was still young, but it is a cycle nevertheless. Each cycles don't need to look exactly the same; some cycles bottomed above the previous cycle ATH while some below, but they maintain similar structures and timeline.

My point was not that, but the fact that there were two clear "troughs" with -80-85%: mid-2013 ($50, after the rally up to $250) and 2014/15 ($150, after the rally up to $1100). The 2014/15 trough was longer while the 2013 one looked more like a short dip, but nevertheless the April 2013 crash felt like a drastic trend change, and you could have lost almost all your capital if you traded it wrong. So with the same right that you could say that there was a 2011-15 cycle, I could say that there were two: 2011-13 and 2013-15.

I guess so. I believe it was that way due to being a baby market, but we still tend to include it. Anyway, I agree with you. Even though it appears to be 2 cycles (trough-to-trough) we call it one just to keep up with appearances  ; the 2013 dip was just a short one anyway.

I'm not saying the rate of demand is programmed in the product, I'm saying the disinflationary mechanism has a potential to make demand appear more than supply, thus fulfilling the definition of scarcity.

Yes "appear" is true, but you still need the sentiment to align.

Of course! This creates the sentiment that sets up the cycles.

My main point is that the halving driven "demand push" was and is weaker in every cycle. It is thus likely that the "sentiment driven" demand/supply changes already since 2020, and maybe even 2016, are more important than the halving events.

For example, I made a little calculation in 2024, when there were a series of remarkable crashes in the middle of the year. Nothing too harsh, but there were 15-20% dips in a single day. In these events, more than 100,000 coins were sold (in the sense that they were taken away from the buy orders, not the buy/sell operations). One of these days saw a "selling surplus" of roughly 150,000 coins. This were almost all the coins created in a whole year after the 2024 halving. And the dips were all sentiment driven.

I only wanted to add this to illustrate my point - and for these reasons, I'm really not sure that I still can recommend people to trade these cycles. Maybe the current one has still a probabilty of more than 50% to work, because "all stars aligned" between late 2025 and now, and the "cyclist prophecy" is still strong.

But these are just short term changes. The trend still kept up with its main course for months. There is no way a trend will be smooth sailing, price will always have highs and lows in every trend. Even the Bitcoin yearly chart is in an uptrend, with Higher-Highs and Higher-Lows. If there are dips that don't reverse the trend then I feel it is normal. Well you may call it a "self-fulfilling prophecy ", I call it adhering to the timeline  .

Ok let's talk about the now. After the collapse of FTT, we all agreed that ETFs and Trump drove the price up, so what brought the price down? This is still not clear to me. I know we will say a whole lot of factors, but I believe it is simply just over-saturation of the up trend, and the market adhering to the timeline based on the halving event.

I agree with the oversaturation (massive profit taking in overbought conditions), but the "adhering to the timeline" was also accompanied by the "prophecy" effect. But there was also another factor: I think people expected too much from the "Bitcoin Reserve" announced by Trump. They thought the US would at least buy actively some hundreds of thousands. That narrative was very widespread in late 2024 and early 2025. I was skeptic about that, but many were not. They thought Bitcoin had already achieved the status of gold for central banks. We're quite away from that (and I think this is not bad).

And I think the downtrend is also a reaction to the fact that Trump is now highly unpopular in the US. The first major politician who used Bitcoin in election propaganda. That's not necessarily bad for Bitcoin but it is not exactly what people need to fall into "supercycle euphoria".

If this were true, why are we having adoption in its ATH? I don't think people actively started selling because of Trump, we have more adoption ths year than ever.

There have never been a time in the history of Bitcoin's cycles where the adoption rate of a bear market is higher than its preceding bull market's adoption rate. The level of adoption is in its ATH right now. ETFs and large institutions bought a lot of Bitcoin earlier this year and yet the trend failed to reverse. A lot of positive news like SEC fast approval of crypto ETFs and so many others. And yet the price kept dipping.

I don't remember any news that were that important to really trigger a trend reversal. "Other crypto ETFs" are not that important, the main news was the acceptance in late '23/early '24. Repeating news are usually weak.

The trend could however have reversed if we hadn't seen the famous "Saylor dip". When the price crashed from 83,000 or so back to 57,000, many people were convinced that Strategy was about to go bankrupt and would have to sell all the 800,000 Bitcoins.

Both this and the "millionaire Bitcoin reserve" were typical exaggerations of panic and FOMO phases. But they were based on news.

But the market was still falling even when Saylor was actively buying this year, how do we explain this?  Saylor has been accumulating since 2020 making Bitcoin his company treasury reserve, it's not like its the first bear market he had experienced.

And you said these things just cause panic and FOMO - these effects only cause temporary price change, not real trend reversal - they don't create long term sentiment and speculation in the market which can affect the trend.

The funny thing is the coldcard case (although it's a sad incident): I placed a sell trade and placed my SL above a support line. Price went up to the support line even after the coldcard case before going back down, and it isn't even an aggressive sell. This case should've caused a serious FUD in the market, but we saw little negative impact. From my own observation, it had no impact at all cause price moved as it should.

I didn't even know what Coldcard was until they were hacked, and only after the fact I learned that it was a highly promoted product and very popular among Bitcoin maxis

Yes one could argument that it is negative news for Bitcoin as a whole, as a lot of people could distrust self custody and simply sell, in theory. But we are already in oversold conditions I think. There is massive support around the 60k area it seems. In these conditions it is difficult to push the price further down. It has to be catastrophic news, and that's imo not the case. The outcome is even highly positive: the Bitcoin community is now aware of the threat and the Red Team has already massively scanned wallets to find vulnerabilities. On the whole, the software ecosystem is getting stronger. And the stolen BTC were less than 2000 until now, many hacks in the past that had no incidence at all on the price evolution were much more massive.

Why is there a massive support in the 60k area? Well, that's because of the cycle theory A.k.A the halving effect. You see how the halving influences the trend?

Nonetheless, the coldcard case is not just about the lost funds, it's more about the lost faith; questioning if what they believed in to be safe and secured is truly safe and secured, questioning what else isn't safe and secured out there. This simply is a catalyst for FUD.

I think however, without Coldcard, it is possible that the BTC price would already fight again for 70,000$, instead of dipping below 63k.

I don't think so, I would've loved to pull up a chart but lemme just explain with words.
Before the coldcard case, price topped at ~67k in the daily chart. It made HH and HL to that point before it reversed and broke the structure by hitting a resistance at around 65k then made a low at around 62k - this price action is obviously a sell trend in the daily time-frame - The coldcard case didn't even cause any aggressive sell, price even went higher than the price of the day the coldcard case exploit began.

So I honestly don't think that without the coldcard case price would've continued upward.

My main point of contention is that, if news is the front-runner cause of the cycles and trends, why are some news affecting the trend and some aren't: some news can change the trend while some couldn't despite being a major news.

I don't know if you read the thread I linked where I speculate about that. I think there are news that really could hint about a new adoption pattern, like for example the Trump news in late 2024, where people thought there was a new era of "central banks becoming Bitcoin bulls". The ETFs are a case where such a news indeed changed the adoption pattern. The "Saylor dip" caused massive fear due to the possibility of a sale of almost 1 million BTC. There were people that thought this could bring BTC back to $10,000 or lower, and that would have completely changed the bullish narrative.

While Coldcard ... as I wrote, it's 2000 BTC or so until now. It's really a small amount, and the "real outcome" -> better security practices -> seems to be positive.

I actually read it and i agree with most of what you said, but these news only create short term sentiment and not a structured trend that has a defined pattern.

I actually addressed the Trump and Saylors claim.

The coldcard case may have helped in strengthening security, but it also created FUD.

My take on why the Coldcard case had little effect is because, majority of the adopters don't use cold storage, they use custodial wallets or hot storage. That's just my opinion from my observation anyway.

[Taskford]

There have never been a time in the history of Bitcoin's cycles where the adoption rate of a bear market is higher than its preceding bull market's adoption rate. The level of adoption is in its ATH right now. ETFs and large institutions bought a lot of Bitcoin earlier this year and yet the trend failed to reverse. A lot of positive news like SEC fast approval of crypto ETFs and so many others. And yet the price kept dipping.

I don't remember any news that were that important to really trigger a trend reversal. "Other crypto ETFs" are not that important, the main news was the acceptance in late '23/early '24. Repeating news are usually weak.

The trend could however have reversed if we hadn't seen the famous "Saylor dip". When the price crashed from 83,000 or so back to 57,000, many people were convinced that Strategy was about to go bankrupt and would have to sell all the 800,000 Bitcoins.

Both this and the "millionaire Bitcoin reserve" were typical exaggerations of panic and FOMO phases. But they were based on news.

Those news has been cited by people during those reversal is not even a strong catalyst. People are just to emotional seeing those dumps happening in the market.

The real macro event I've seen is the approval of the ETF, any other than that is just noise or for the hype. Those huge drops happened from $87k to $57k is just driven by panic and over exaggeration that more bad news will came.

Lots of people got scared about Strategy negative possibilities that might going to happen on Strategy, but so far there's nothing like that happen. Those things is just another classic exaggerations and to bad there are several people buys it. If they just know how to filter those over reaction happening, for sure that they would see the long term trend does not actually change.

The funny thing is the coldcard case (although it's a sad incident): I placed a sell trade and placed my SL above a support line. Price went up to the support line even after the coldcard case before going back down, and it isn't even an aggressive sell. This case should've caused a serious FUD in the market, but we saw little negative impact. From my own observation, it had no impact at all cause price moved as it should.

I didn't even know what Coldcard was until they were hacked, and only after the fact I learned that it was a highly promoted product and very popular among Bitcoin maxis 🙂

Yes one could argument that it is negative news for Bitcoin as a whole, as a lot of people could distrust self custody and simply sell, in theory. But we are already in oversold conditions I think. There is massive support around the 60k area it seems. In these conditions it is difficult to push the price further down. It has to be catastrophic news, and that's imo not the case. The outcome is even highly positive: the Bitcoin community is now aware of the threat and the Red Team has already massively scanned wallets to find vulnerabilities. On the whole, the software ecosystem is getting stronger. And the stolen BTC were less than 2000 until now, many hacks in the past that had no incidence at all on the price evolution were much more massive.

I think however, without Coldcard, it is possible that the BTC price would already fight again for 70,000$, instead of dipping below 63k.

Common people have less idea about cold card and this start to get lots of attention when exploit occurs. I always heard this wallet on maxis since this is been suggested to use especially if they see people interested to hold their Bitcoin for long term.

Good to see how market react and the effect of that incident is so mild. It seems that Fuds are been oversold and there's strong demand at current price zone. Maybe it needs more devastating news to break the support.

Also yeah if that exploit on cold card didn't happened. Maybe we might saw Bitcoin crossing back at $70k. Instead of moving stable at $62k - $63k.

After the FUD or those bad news fades, maybe we will see Bitcoin again prepare for possible much bigger trend.

[Comeacross]

Unless you don't know that Bitcoin is unpredictable, that will make you think in that way. Just take a look of this year dump and pump then you will know that there will be chang soon that will make the price of Bitcoin to dump more or pump higher above the current price $62,000.

Is this supposed to be a news? It's a norm for bitcoin to pump and dump, It only moves in that two directions but no one knows when it moves up and down. We can only predict and speculate about it's movement. Where we are currently, I can not say we are bullish neither bearish, we are stuck in the middle. Of course, we can't remain here forever, change will certainly come and it might come either way, up or down but if your goal is long term holding, then you should have fun stacking up while we stuck in here.

[bitbollo]

All bitcoins halvings can be considere the same and different in the same time.
Just to mention that in all cases, this event has lead to an increase of the price in terms of FIAT change... anyway the % of this increase has dramatically changed.
I would not expect as somewhat common to have an increase likewise early halvings.

Anyway the price of btc it's still undervalued...probably using FIAT as unit of measure could become somewaht useless or secondary to the real value of the coin.

[LUCKMCFLY]

I think we may see another significant drop in Bitcoin’s price sometime this fall, and it would be a great opportunity to take advantage of it. There is still plenty of time before bitcoin starts gaining momentum again, so there’s an opportunity to accumulate it at a good price. However, I don’t think DCA should only be used when the price is falling. I usually use this strategy throughout the entire cycle, except for roughly a one- to two-month period when bitcoin is reaching new highs. During that period, I prefer to gradually sell some of my Bitcoin so that I can later buy back a larger amount when the price drops again.

Well, the DCA strategy for BTC is very effective because it builds solid discipline. It isn't affected by natural market dips or pullbacks. If there are dips or the price shows a slight downward trend, an investor can gradually buy, taking advantage of the lower levels to accumulate significantly more BTC without disrupting their core DCA plan.

The idea behind relentless accumulation is to capitalize on these consolidation zones. The simple fact that its ATH touched around $126K and that it's currently floating at nearly half that figure is reason enough to continue accumulating BTC for the long term.

[citywise2]

If you look at the history of the highest prices then I think a significant decline has occurred several times this back. Even after the drop it touched the price of $57k and it was almost 45% of ATH. I am not very good at reading charts but in general this pattern has similarities with the previous cycle, so it shows that the post-halving cycle process will remain on track only the duration can be shorter or longer.

Charts can help us see this cyclical pattern, and for someone who has been following bitcoin for a while, even one or two cycles can be enough to recognize the pattern and potentially make use of it. The four-year period is not a constant; it’s only an approximate timeframe that may fluctuate somewhat. But if you want to generate a good return from a bitcoin investment, you need to base your approach around this timeframe.

The four-year cycle is indeed an approximate timeframe as many traders only take note of it  and forget it until it is close by but every time Bitcoins recovers some grounds, off they go pulling it down by taking profit, sometime they don't know that profit taking is actually an order to sell. That is how Bitcoin bearish market have gotten so strong and you may ask, who are the ones that does not want Bitcoin to make new ATH and you may see no hands because majority are bullish in words but bearish in action.