Bitcoin’s four-year cycle and the cyclical bear market could be the trap at the end of 2025. Find out more in analyst Vincent Ganne’s explanation.
$126,000 may not be the cyclical peak
For more than ten years, the dominant framework for analyzing the Bitcoin market has been based on the four-year cycle theory, centered around halving. This mechanism, which halves the creation of BTC, has historically punctuated the major phases of rise, euphoria, and then correction of the asset.
However, since the bottom at the end of 2022, several major anomalies have called into question the robustness of this model. The question is no longer just where we are in the cycle, but whether this cycle still makes sense in an environment where Bitcoin is now evolving as a global, mature, and macro-sensitive asset.
The first anomaly is that the supposed cyclical peak of October 2025 ($126,000 on October 6) does not correspond to traditional business cycle benchmarks. The copper/gold ratio, an excellent proxy for risk appetite and the strength of the global economic cycle, does not show any of the characteristics of a macroeconomic peak.
Historically, the major peaks in the price of Bitcoin (2013, 2017, 2021) coincide with an overheated industrial cycle, which is reflected in a high copper/gold ratio close to its peak.
However, in 2024-2025, this ratio remained depressed, with no comparable upward momentum, and even with recurring signs of weakness. If Bitcoin has indeed reached a cyclical peak, then this is in complete contradiction with the global cycle, which has never happened before.
Does the 4-year cycle forged by halving still make sense?
The second anomaly is that each time, the halving loses a little more of its mechanical impact. The data is clear: in 2012, the halving halved Bitcoin’s monetary inflation, reducing annual issuance from 1.3 million to 657,000 BTC. In 2016, then 2020 and 2024, this effect gradually decreased: 12% → 6%, then 4% → 2%, then 1.8% → 0.9%, then only 0.8% → 0.4%.
With this halving of an increasingly smaller peak (in 2028, the impact will be almost insignificant), the relevance of the 4-year cycle organized around the halving is therefore completely called into question. Today, the halving is no longer a supply shock capable of mechanically fueling an explosive cycle (and therefore a bear market?); it has become a narrative catalyst (perhaps now simply psychological), whose real impact increasingly depends on the macroeconomic context, global liquidity, and institutional demand. In this context, one question arises: does the traditional 12-month cyclical bear market still make sense? If the four-year cycle is less and less dictated by supply, and more and more by macroeconomics and institutional flows, then the very structure of Bitcoin cycles may be evolving towards a model closer to traditional assets: phases of expansion and contraction linked to global liquidity, real rates, and the global economic cycle.
Perhaps we are no longer in a simple “Bitcoin cycle,” but in a macro cycle with Bitcoin inside it. And if that is the case, then the timing of the cyclical bear market no longer has any reason to be mechanical or predictable, and it could be the big trap at the end of 2025.
