Bitcoin's 4-Year Cycle Is Dead
56sChallenges a core crypto belief with counterintuitive facts, making viewers question everything they know about Bitcoin cycles.
▶ Play Clip"Delivers a solid macro and cycle analysis that matches the title, with only minor repetition and a closing plug."
Bitcoin's current cycle is breaking every historical pattern—no classic blow-off top, no altseason, no retail mania—yet prices remain surprisingly strong. The video analyzes the market's key assumptions, the oil/inflation threat, and the upcoming May CPI report as the next major catalyst, then lays out where Bitcoin is headed over the next 30–90 days and into year-end.
Bitcoin has spent five months in chop with widespread fear, but this cycle never saw a classic euphoric blow-off top, real retail mania, or an altseason. Despite wars, oil shocks, and high rates, Bitcoin is holding surprisingly high prices.
The market believes the economy is okay, AI is generating real profits, the Fed won't crush growth, and liquidity is sufficient. The key question is whether future reality will be better or worse than these expectations.
Story one: AI + strong earnings + an okay economy keeps markets rising. Story two: inflation returns, fueled by the Iran conflict and oil, forcing rates higher and tightening liquidity. The second story is losing now but could flip.
Before the Iran conflict, oil and inflation looked benign. Now oil is much higher, and since energy is baked into everything, it pushes inflation up and threatens markets, Bitcoin, and crypto.
Because of the Iran conflict and soaring oil prices, the market no longer prices any rate cuts for 2026. Some Fed governors are even discussing hikes, a complete reversal of expectations from last year.
Late-stage bull markets react badly to bad news. Stocks have a lot of hope priced in, while Bitcoin has already been through a beating — so Bitcoin has shown exceptional resilience despite terrible macro news.
The May CPI report arrives in about 18 hours. A hot print could trigger a chain reaction in stocks and, due to high correlation, drag crypto down. The market reaction to the print matters most.
Good news with a rally is positive; bad news with a drop shows fragility; good news with no rally signals an exhausted market; bad news with an upward move is a bullish sign of resilience.
Bitcoin is supported by strong ETF flows, limited supply for sale, low leverage and fraud, and it continues to hold high prices despite a high cost of money. It wants to go higher, but inflation risk is the anchor.
2025 saw the first all-time high before a halving, unlike 2017 and 2021. There was no parabolic blow-off top, no altseason, and no retail mania — the entire vibe was dead compared to past cycles.
The sell-off was caused by the TGA rebuild, the longest government shutdown in history, and the 10/10 liquidation day — not by euphoria. This created a self-fulfilling prophecy that confirmed the 4-year cycle narrative.
A cool CPI could send Bitcoin toward 85K and then 95K. A hot CPI could push it back to test 70K. For year-end, Bitcoin is likely above 100K if inflation cooperates.
Someone who sold at 90K and bought back now has only 0.926 BTC due to fees and taxes, while a holder kept a full coin. Recovery from 60K to 80K already rewards patience.
Bitcoin is rewriting the four-year cycle playbook, with structural strength from ETF flows and low supply overriding the old euphoria-driven crash pattern. The near term all comes down to inflation and the May CPI print, but the creator believes the bottom is already in and that holding beats trying to time an October low.
What was different about Bitcoin's cycle in 2025 compared to 2017 and 2021?
It saw the first-ever all-time high before the halving, with no blow-off top, no altseason, and no retail mania.
11:03
What are the two competing stories currently driving the market?
Story one: AI + strong earnings + okay economy = markets keep going up. Story two: inflation returns (Iran, oil) → rates climb, liquidity tightens, markets tumble.
03:22
What is the single most important short-term price catalyst mentioned?
The May CPI report.
07:20
What effect does a hot CPI print typically have on crypto prices according to the video?
It can trigger a chain reaction of stock market losses, dragging Bitcoin down because it is currently highly correlated with stocks.
07:32
What are the four possible market reactions to the CPI print and what do they signal?
Good news with rally = positive; bad news with drop = fragile; good news with no rally = exhausted/bearish; bad news with rally = resilient/bullish.
08:12
Why did the 2025 sell-off happen according to the creator?
The TGA rebuild, longest government shutdown in history, and the 10/10 liquidation day event — not euphoria like past cycles.
12:22
What price targets does the creator give for a cool CPI print?
Bitcoin may test 85K then work up to 95K in the short term.
14:21
What happens to a trader who sells at 90K and later buys back versus a holder?
The trader ends up with only 0.926 BTC due to taxes and fees, while the holder keeps 1 BTC.
15:01
Why does the creator believe the bottom is likely already in?
Unless CPI gets out of control, the structural drivers and recovery from 60K suggest the bottom is in, and bears waiting for October may miss it.
15:41
What is the market currently not pricing in for 2026?
Any rate cuts. Due to the Iran conflict and oil prices, rate cuts have been priced out, and some Fed governors are discussing hikes.
05:35
Oil Is the Deciding Catalyst
Identifies the specific macro trigger (Iran/oil) that flipped the market narrative and now determines whether inflation spirals.
04:01CPI as the Near-Term Binary Event
It gives viewers a concrete event to watch that will shape crypto price action over the next 30-90 days.
07:202025 Broke the Pre-Halving Pattern
First-ever ATH before a halving, with no blow-off top or altseason, proving the cycle is unlike 2017 or 2021.
11:03Liquidity, Not Euphoria, Drove the Sell-Off
Reframes the 2025 crash as a liquidity-driven event (TGA, shutdown, liquidations) rather than the classic mania collapse.
13:02The Bearish October Thesis Is Likely Wrong
Challenges the popular view that a deeper bottom comes in October, arguing the bottom is already in and the market will grind higher.
15:41[00:01] misreading crypto right now. They see five months of chop, fear everywhere, perfectly on schedule, and they assume this is just the same four-year cycle repeating again. But, if you zoom out, this cycle has looked nothing like the
[00:16] high before the halving for the first time ever. We never got the classic euphoric blow-off top. Retail never truly arrived. Altseason never really happened. And despite wars, oil shocks, high rates, and one of the most hostile
[00:30] macro environments crypto has ever traded through, Bitcoin is still holding surprisingly high prices. That's important because markets usually break before conditions get this bad, not after. So, in this video, I want to walk
[00:43] happened over this last year, why Bitcoin looks structurally stronger than most people realize, why tomorrow might be the single most important short-term price catalyst of them all, and could really determine where Bitcoin goes from
[00:57] here, and where I honestly think Bitcoin is headed next. Okay, so right now, the market basically believes this story. That the economy is still okay, AI is making companies tons of money, the Fed probably won't crush the economy, and
[01:10] liquidity is good enough to keep stocks and crypto, Bitcoin, etc. moving higher. That's the future that the market is currently pricing in. And the question we shouldn't be asking ourselves right now is, is the economy good or is the
[01:23] important question we should be asking ourselves right now is, will reality be better or worse in the future than the market is currently pricing in? And so, market is believing right now. They're They're believing that the economy is
[01:38] okay. I would say this is yes. This is correct. People still jobs, people still breaking right now. It's not a boom, but it's not a crisis. The plain vanilla is that the market is holding right now is
[01:51] this is also true. AI companies are making real money right now. This isn't made-up future money. This is real money in the pockets of these companies right now. CAPEX build out isn't slowing. And so basically the engine pulling the
[02:04] engine. This is a real thing. I actually think AI profits in in all of this not actually think this is going to be a lot bigger deal than most people are even the market's currently holding is that the Fed won't crush the market. AKA the
[02:20] Fed's not going to, you know, raise rates anytime soon or do anything crazy like that. And I would say that that that's probably true as well. We do have Kevin Warsh coming in. I expect Kevin Warsh to be dovish
[02:33] because because Trump put him into the position of Fed chair. But that doesn't mean the entire Fed governor board will be dovish. I I don't know. In terms of that, I I genuinely don't know. That's like that is a hard question to answer
[02:45] given the current state of inflation and oil prices and all of that. But I would then cuts definitely come back on the board. And I would say overall, you the Fed seems very accurate. And then the fourth belief the market's currently
[02:57] holding is that liquidity is good enough to keep things sustained. I would also sloshing around. I actually think liquidity is going to improve going to year end because of midterms, because of I I believe the TJ the Treasury's going
[03:09] to draw down the TGA, which is going to inject more liquidity into the market, to be supportive macro wise because, you know, Trump and Bessette, they all want they're going to be supportive going into the end of the year. So I think
[03:22] that one also, you know, passes the the test. And so right now you basically have two competing stories in the market. The first story is basically AI plus strong earnings plus an okay economy equals markets keep going up.
[03:34] winning in the market, okay? People believe this more than they don't believe this. The second story is currently losing, but that might be about to change in the near term, and I'll explain why in a second. And that's
[03:47] inflation is going to come back. It's going to spiral out of control because, whole conflict in Iran. All this is going to cause inflation to cut rates. Rates are going to actually climb. Liquidity's going to tighten. And
[04:01] tumbling down. And basically the catalyst that could really wake up this could really flip the markets from more. And this really comes down to oil right now. That this entire conflict in
[04:15] Iran has flipped the entire script for 2026. Before this, oil was like looking with Venezuela. I mean, we were looking just so good. Inflation was looking good. Everything was looking good. But then this entire conflict in Iran
[04:29] flipped that script on its head, pushed oil ridiculously high. historically it's not that high, okay? But it pushed it a lot higher than it was. And this is really bad when it comes to inflation. Like energy is baked
[04:43] into everything. Energy is literally in everything you do. Anytime somebody drives to the store, people driving to work, products being transported all country, energy is baked into everything, which means inflation goes
[04:56] up or the cost of everything goes up when energy prices go up, which is why it's such a really horrible thing to happen, especially when it comes to markets. And when inflation goes up, that sets into effect a whole bunch of
[05:08] policies and different things that are really bad for markets, that are really bad for Bitcoin's price, crypto's price, everything's price. And so we don't want you guys remember back last year, we were expecting the Fed to cut rates.
[05:22] Warsh to come in here, Trump's guy to come in here and be like, let's cut some get some money flowing into this economy. That's what we were expecting. story. In fact, now the market's not
[05:35] pricing in any rate cuts for 2026 because of this entire conflict in Iran and oil prices skyrocketing, all of that going on. It is It's completely flipped it on its head because the Fed doesn't want to re-accelerate inflation, and
[05:48] towards inflation. It like the pushes inflation even further. In fact, now some Fed governors are talking about raising rates. So, oil prices rising and enemy right now that everything like the market coming back, all that kind of
[06:03] stuff. Oil and inflation are the number one thing to keep an eye on because that is what will flip the script from bullish right now to bearish. And right bit less forgiving. So, early in a bull market drop ugly news, bad news, and the
[06:16] market doesn't really react to it. In fact, sometimes it goes up on the bad news. It doesn't necessarily affect the price. But late stage in a bull market, line. And the way that that works is again
[06:29] people's expectations of the future is so high, and the market's already done a lot of its performance that if you have any sort of bad news come in or that reality that they see for the future, that can really cause
[06:42] devastating impact to prices and to you know, the current state of the market. And this is really more about stocks than it is Bitcoin. Bitcoin has been performing like exceptionally despite some of the worst macro news like ever.
[06:54] Where earlier, you know, Bitcoin wasn't going up even with good news. It was just kept collapsing in price. Stocks are are the more of the thing to kind of nervous about because they're a little bit more fragile. There's a lot more
[07:06] hope and positivity priced into the stock market today where Bitcoin's already gone through a beating. And really in the short term, the number one the market and really the the one thing that we're waiting on right now is what
[07:20] that we're waiting on right now is what happens tomorrow. In 18 hours and 22 minutes, we're going to get the May CPI report, and this is where if inflation comes in a little bit too hot, it could really set off kind of a chain reaction
[07:32] the stock market and therefore really bad for crypto, Bitcoin, etc. right now because it's tracking so closely with the stock market. are going to sell their Bitcoin because they're going to be like, "Oh my gosh,
[07:46] Either way, it kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where you see Bitcoin go down if the stock market goes down in the current state of things. always how Bitcoin's not always as correlated with the stock market, but it
[07:58] kind of jumps in and out of correlation with the stock market. And right now is market. So, if the stock market takes a hit because of bad a bad CPI print, then we could see a pretty big hit to crypto etc. At least in the short term. And
[08:12] that's where you got to really watch the reaction of how people, you know, adjust to this news tomorrow. So, tomorrow if we get good news and that pushes us higher, that's good. I mean, like we want to see that. That should mean, you
[08:24] Nothing really even to think about with that one. If the headline comes in bad means that the market is a lot more fragile than most people expect. And that's where you got to really be careful because now that bad news is
[08:39] affecting the price of the markets. If tomorrow we get good news and there's no rally, that's also really bearish. So, that that means the market's really exhausted. It's worn out. And that's your cue to say, "Hey, we
[08:51] might be heading for lower prices." And tomorrow if we get bad news, but it keeps going up, that's really bullish. That's your indicator that like, "Wow, okay, the market's still pretty ding resilient and even with this bad news
[09:04] because the market's sort of just shrugging it off." And again, I'm mostly emphasizing the stock market. Bitcoin's going to be like collateral damage with the stock market, but Bitcoin itself, despite what you're hearing on accident,
[09:16] saying about Bitcoin, is actually showing a lot of structural strength. this or just kind of digging their head in the sand because, you know, they because that's what the 4-year cycle says. But as I said at the start of this
[09:30] cycle is dead and that a lot of people that have been playing this kind of silly playbook of count to four and then just kind of follow this really basic this cycle because they're missing the core driver of past cycles which was
[09:43] really keeping Bitcoin strong is we have these ETF flows that are just absolutely coming from these ETF flows pushing Bitcoin's price up is not anything we've
[09:55] liquidity keeps growing. There's really not that much Bitcoin supply for sale. at really low levels of leverage and fraud. And just in general Bitcoin is holding high prices despite a pretty high cost of money right now. And I
[10:10] is that it really wants to go higher. Like if you just look at the chart, you look at the setup, you look at the flows, Bitcoin wants to go higher, but keeps slowing down Bitcoin's
[10:22] acceleration. And that is again tied back to inflation. If we wouldn't have had this conflict in Iran and you know oil prices were looking like they were you know, this would be a whole different story because you know, we'd
[10:34] stuff, but we're not doing that right now. And that means you kind of have inflation risk, all this kind of stuff is pushing back against Bitcoin which is trying to move higher and kind of weighing us down. And any sort of change
[10:48] in that state, if we were I don't know Kevin Warsh works some Fed magic and something, that would completely change the script and we start to see Bitcoin's the start of the video, but I really did want to highlight one more time how much
[11:03] different this cycle has been from past cycles. If you look at 2017, there was uh no new all-time high before having. In 2021, there was no new all-time high before having. In 2025, we saw the first-ever all-time high before having.
[11:16] In 2017, we had a parabolic blow-off top. In 2021, we had basically had two parabolic blow-off tops. In 2025, none. In 2017, we had an alt season. In 2021, we had like the most epic alt season of all time. In 2025, no no nothing like
[11:30] that. In 2017, we had heavy peak mania, just absolutely crazy retail involvement. In 2021, everyone and their mom was investing in crypto. It was everywhere. In 2025, the entire vibe was dead. Like, I didn't hear No retail was
[11:43] talking about it. Nobody was like hyped up on crypto. 2025 was just like a dead, abysmal, like, just down year. It felt like there's a rain cloud over the entire year. There was no There was no like mania, excitement, froth, nothing
[11:56] like that. Completely different than past cycles. And as I've highlighted before, past cycles were primarily macro driven, uh where this cycle has not been macro driven. Macro has been like a dead horse over here. Uh you know, where past
[12:08] cycles were these crazy, just like, parties. And like I said earlier as line up is the sell-off came perfectly on time. We had this sell-off in late state the later part of 2025, right when you expected the 4-year cycle sell-off.
[12:22] different things. The TGA rebuild, uh which really weakened liquidity. I talked about this for like months and months before this happened. The longest government shutdown in history. That further weakened liquidity because
[12:35] the government's not spending money, no money flowing into the economy means really low fragile liquidity off the back of the TGA rebuild. And then we had that 1010 liquidation day event that really just absolutely destroyed the
[12:47] liquidations and it really set off the cascade lower. And those three things together really confirmed uh in people's minds sort of like a fool's gold for the everyone's belief in the 4-year cycle. It kind of created this self-fulfilling
[13:02] prophecy that caused this cascade sell-off into the the start of the year. But, fundamentally, it's different than the things that caused previous 4-year sell-offs were from massive amounts of euphoria that had built in the market.
[13:16] All this euphoria pushed prices up. The market was at peak mania and froth, and okay? Like, at that point, like, all the people that were going to buy were going next buyer. They weren't going to show up. The market was in this extremely
[13:30] always describe it as like a Jenga tower where they took all the pieces out and just like inevitable for that thing to collapse because it's so unhealthy at that point. And all these like revenge rallies that you see in a typical 4-year
[13:42] cycle, and the reason it takes a year to bleed out is because of that euphoria and that mania that's built into the market. And everyone really is buying to continue to go higher and higher because the mania has just been too
[13:54] money, and it's just really easy to believe that. This last cycle was of like, "Eh." Kind of gave a shrug. I mean, there there's definitely bullish attitude, but it's not like past cycles. Not at all
[14:06] really do have this sort of like fork in the road, uh where depending on how the the CPI print comes in, and depending on how the market reacts to it, um we could really see two different outcomes. One, if we get a cool CPI print, uh I I think
[14:21] that's when we start to see maybe Bitcoin try to go test 85K, and then kind of work its way up to 95K. Uh if we don't see that, if we see a really hot CPI print above expectations, I think that's when we start to see price go
[14:34] back down and try to test that 70K level. So, really, uh depending on how the short term for like the next 30 to 90 days. And this says year end, and not saying that, you know, 95K year end or 72K year end. I actually think the
[14:49] year end, especially if CPI comes in cool, could be a lot higher than 95K. This is more kind of like over the next sort of summer period, vague, you know, sort of summer period, vague, you know, 30 to 90 to 100 days sort of period. And
[15:01] that sold at 90K, you actually have less Bitcoin today than the person who did nothing and just held. And that's because of all the fees, taxes, etc. The person who just held would still, but you know, theoretically, if they had a
[15:13] Bitcoin. And the person who sold and bought back would have 0.926 Bitcoin. Uh cuz there is a cost in taxes and fees, etc. to selling. So we have actually made a pretty meaningful recovery from 60k, you know, all the way up to 80k.
[15:28] really understanding or pricing in that although the past few months have been horrific and not fun, those who held through it are actually sitting pretty well off versus those who honestly probably have not bought back in today.
[15:41] Most of the bears are still waiting for October to buy back in. They think that the sell-off that that's going to be the perfect time to buy back in. But that is is that we're not going to see a bottom in October. The bottom is likely unless
[15:57] CPI gets out of control, the bottom is likely in at this point. And I actually you know, slow grind higher into the end of the year. I don't think anything spectacular is going to happen in 2026. But I do think if things went well, you
[16:10] of flip positive. It's possible we see all-time highs broken by the end of the I wouldn't say that's necessarily likely at this point. Again, a couple of things But I do think we're going to be over 100k by the end of the year.
[16:24] higher by October when most of the bears are thinking that they're going to buy at the lows at 30k or 20k or you know, whatever they're saying now. point. And if you're curious about seeing my entire portfolio or you want
[16:37] to see every time I buy and sell various tokens as well as different weekly video Council is closed to new members, but you can sign up for the waitlist in the always, none of this is investment advice. None of this is me telling you
[16:50] obviously not your financial advisor and you should always do your own research. see more videos like this, make sure you hit that subscribe button and the little I release a new video. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next week.
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