Transcription
Hey everyone, and thanks for jumping back into the cryptoverse. Today we're going to talk about Bitcoin, and we're going to be discussing how the 4-year cycle, at least for now, remains very much intact despite the pervasive narratives that say otherwise.
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There's been this narrative floating around Twitter and YouTube for the last several months that people are saying that the four-year cycle in fact died. And the reason they say that is oftentimes because it didn't really feel like Bitcoin went up as much as what people thought it was going to, or because their altcoin did not rally. The first thing is, altcoins not going up is not a reason to justify the four-year cycle not playing out. There is an ample amount of evidence that the four-year cycle has in fact played out exactly how it always has. Exactly how it always has. Yes, things were not as euphoric, but the price topped when it always does. And we're going to go through a few examples to show you how this time really has not been different.
If you look at the prior three market cycle tops, they occurred in the fourth quarter of the post-election year or the post-halving year. Q4 of 2013, sorry. So we got Q4 of 2013, we have Q4 of 2017, Q4 of 2021, and Q4 of 2025. Now, while it is true there are people that are trying to do mental gymnastics to try to explain why the four-year cycle is broken, you can quickly look at something like this and see that there's the narrative and then there's actually what happened, right? And the narrative is that the four-year cycle broke, but what actually happened is Bitcoin topped when it always tops.
Now, there's a really interesting chart that we can look at that helps show these market cycles. So, what we're going to do is we're going to look at the ROI of the low from the low, each market cycle, and then measure it out to the peak. When you do that, you get a chart that looks like this. What do you notice about this cycle compared to the last two? This cycle lasted, it topped on day 1,620, which was in October of 2025, day 1,620. The cycle before this one topped on day 1,590, so 30 days different. The cycle before that one topped on day 1,680, so 60 days later. So, Bitcoin topped within a week of the last two cycles as measured from the low to the high. How can we look at that and say that the four-year cycle broke? We can't. We cannot look at that and claim the four-year cycle broke just because someone's altcoin didn't go up, right? And I'm not talking about your alt, clearly. But we have to do away with this narrative that the four-year cycle broke just because some far-fetched price predictions didn't actually pan out. The data suggests that Bitcoin topped when it always tops and then it entered into the bear market when it always does, when it always enters into the bear market. So the four-year cycle did not break. It's just that people's expectations of what the bull market would bring were too high. And so now they think that something changed and therefore they're looking for a way to sort of justify why it doesn't have to play out like it always does, even though it continues to play out like it always does.
If you look at the ROI of Bitcoin as measured from the peak, there hasn't been as drastic of a drawdown as some of the other prior bear markets, but you can see that it's generally tracking prior bear markets, right? Like it's not like where the ROI is from the peak, this bear market isn't that different from where it was in the last several bear markets. In fact, if you look at the average of the last three bear markets and overlay one standard deviation, while we haven't been in those bounds the entire bear market, you can see that it's not that different from the prior bear markets.
Now, what's really interesting, and this is the most fascinating chart, is if you look at the year-to-date ROI of Bitcoin in 2026, and compare that to the average of prior midterm years, Bitcoin dropped into February, which is when it always finds a low, and then it then rallied into March, which is where it always finds a high. And then usually after that rally, it kind of stalls out for a while and then starts to go down as we get later into March and early into April. You can also add on one standard deviation from there and see that this bear market, this midterm year bear market is playing out like other prior midterm year bear markets. If you look at Bitcoin and you zoom in to every single cycle, you'll notice that Bitcoin would first find a low in February and then rally into March before going lower. That's what happened in 2014. In 2018, Bitcoin found a low in February, rallied into March, and then sold off. And then in 2022, guess what? Bitcoin found a low in February, rallied into March, and then sold off. And so once again, Bitcoin found a low in February, rallied into March, and now we're in this waiting game of, you know, where is the lower high? Is it already in? Do we go a little bit higher? I don't exactly know the answer to that question. But what I do think is that the bear market is still intact. And I do think it is fair to say that the four-year cycle ended up being correct, even though so many people faded it.
What I find really interesting is that those that are the most vocal about the four-year cycle being broken were the ones that faded the four-year cycle last year. Those that are the most vocal that the bear market is over are the ones that told you we were not going into a bear market last year. So when anyone provides an opinion about something, it's important to remember that they might have ulterior motives, okay? If someone did not predict the bear market at all, they're going to be more incentivized to find a reason for it to bottom than for it not to.
Now, are there some indicators we could try and dig up that might suggest the low for Bitcoin could be in? Yeah, like I could find a few. Obviously, people are talking about the number of months after a certain breakout from a prior high being around now. But a few months ago, they were talking about Bitcoin's valuation against gold and how when that bottoms, then Bitcoin eventually went lower. One of the charts I even spoke about a lot was comparing this bear market to the one in 2019, which is this is kind of where it found a low for a while before getting a rally and then finally dumping as the pandemic-induced recession arrived. Okay, but the point is, is for every indicator that you can find that might suggest the low could be in, I could find two that would suggest it's not. Right? And to give you some examples, one example is that historically, Bitcoin bottoms below the balance price each cycle. It did it in 2011 and in 2015 and in 2018 and 2020 and in 2022. The balance price is a lot lower than where we are right now, right? Like you can see right now it looks like it's around 40k. It changes. It's not going to stay the same, but the balance price historically is approximately where Bitcoin has bottomed. So, while it's true that we can go find some metrics, some indicators that would suggest the downside is is capped or limited from here, there's other indicators that what you would look at and be like, well, why would this time be different? Why would it be different? It doesn't have to be different.
The other indicators that you could look at, you could look at the supply of Bitcoin in profit or loss and see that all prior bear market lows occurred after these two metrics crossed, which they have not yet crossed. Another metric that you could look at, you could go look at the MVRV Z-score and see that that normally bottoms below zero and it is still above zero. So, I get that people want to jump the gun and they want to like call the bottom. They called the bottom at 80K. They're calling it again at 60K. There's always a chance that anyone could be right when they call the bottom. The problem is that the people that are the most vocal about calling the bottom never called for the bear market to begin with.
So, what I think makes the most amount of sense is to look at the indicators that people are saying that are the reason why the bottom's in. Be open-minded to them, but also point out other indicators that would question those, right? What would make this time different? Why would we not see the supply in profit and profit and loss cross? Why would we not see the MVRV Z-score go below zero? And why would we not see the Bitcoin price go below the balance price? If the argument, which is the most common argument that I see, if the argument back is just simply something about institutions, every single narrative about institutions, you could have told me the exact same thing six months ago. You could have said the same thing about institutions six months ago as you are saying today. But yet, Bitcoin dropped anyways. So, narratives are fun. They're they're easy to come up with. It's easy to justify it to explain price action. But I've been listening to people say the same thing for the entire bear market. In October and November, the reason why people thought we would continue to go higher was because of institutions. And when we were rallying in November to early January, the reason why people thought the super cycle was going to continue was because of institutions. And so every time we go up for a little bit, it's institutions, institutions, institutions. But then you fast forward a few months and you realize that narrative kind of fell flat on its face.
You can see the difference in market structure in a bull market versus a bear market. Okay. In a bear market, you'll see Bitcoin price generally trends up, which is counterintuitive. It trends up and then breaks down. In the last bear market, Bitcoin would trend down and then break up. You see the difference between the two? So, it's it's like the opposite of what you would expect in a lot of ways. How in the bull market, Bitcoin trended down, convincing people the bull market was over before breaking back up. In fact, in 2024, when the top was in in March, I said to expect about a 6 to 9 month downturn before we get another breakout. And then about 6 to 9 months later, that's ultimately when we eventually broke out. So in the bull market, we went down, right? We would go down for long periods of time and then quickly break higher, leaving the bears in the dust. The bear market is the opposite. You spend months trending up and then you break down very quickly, leaving the bulls in the dust. And so what happens is when Bitcoin goes up in the bear market, it will give the bulls a false sense of security because the market is generally trending higher. But what they don't realize is that in bear markets, often times Bitcoin does spend more time going up than going down. It's just that when it goes down, it goes down very quickly. Just like in the bull market when Bitcoin went up, it would go up very quickly. So, Bitcoin spent a lot of the time in the bull market trending down, but the larger trend was up. We only just spent a few days of the bull market accelerating higher, just like in the bear market, we spend more time trending up, but then whenever we reach that lower high, we then quickly go down to whatever the next low is going to be.
So, as far as I can tell, and maybe I need to get my eyes checked, but as far as I can tell, the the four-year cycle remains intact, and everyone's doing themselves a disservice, pretending that it's not, right? Pretending that this time has been different, despite the fact that Bitcoin topped when it always does. And we spent over a year saying that the most likely top is going to be Q4 of 2025. And that was not based on a crystal ball. It was just simply based on, hey guys, this is what it did the last three times. Maybe it's not that complicated and maybe it'll just do the same thing once again. And so what happens is people do all these mental gymnastics to explain why it won't top then, and then it topped anyways. So as far as I can tell, the four-year cycle remains intact.
Are there some indicators that suggest things, you know, could have bottomed out? There's a few. I'm not going to pretend like there's not. And I even said back in in November, December that after we get a 50% drop, I won't be as bearish. I'm not as bearish as I was when Bitcoin was over 100K. But I still think there's reason to be cautious, especially as you go into March, late March. Often times we'll form a lower high sometime in March. Sometimes it's the early part of March, sometimes it happens a little bit later, but usually the lower high forms and then we go lower into April, May, and and and sort of going into the summer. So, I would say exercise some caution. There's going to be a lot of bulls posting, but remember in bear markets, that's what happens. The bears will get silenced for weeks or months at a time while the market trends higher, and then you'll just quickly break down to a new low. And then the bulls get quiet and then when the market starts turning back up again, the bulls come back out. They magically bought the next low and they start permabull posting again. Eventually they'll be right. The problem is that usually in midterm years, bull posting in February is is often very premature for thinking about where the actual bottom is going to be. So if we were in October and Bitcoin were at 60K, that'd be different. But we're not, right? It's only February of the midterm year and history would typically dictate that it's far too early in this year to call for an end to the bear market. And again, the people calling for it were the ones that never called for the bear market in the first place.
If you guys like the content, make sure you subscribe to the channel, give the video a thumbs up, and check out benjaminc.com if you want to get out the next macro memo coming out uh in just a few days' time. And also check out into the cryptoverse.com. Thank you guys for tuning in. Subscribe. I'll see you guys next time. Bye.