Bitcoin

Equities are grinding near record highs. Gold printed an all-time high above $5,500 earlier this year. But <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Bitcoin</a>? It's trading near $62,000, down roughly 50% from its October 2025 all-time high of $126,198, with the Fear &amp; Greed Index recently printing 15, nearly its lowest reading of 2026.So what's really going on? The answer is part capital rotation, part broken narrative, and, if one eerily accurate anonymous forecast is right, part schedule.<h2 id="how-has-bitcoin-s-price-performed">How Has Bitcoin's Price Performed?</h2>In relative terms, Bitcoin has performed pretty poorly. While BTC has shed roughly 30% year-to-date, gold is up around 80% since the start of 2025, leaving crypto deeply out of favor compared to traditional safe havens and high-growth tech sectors.The long-term charts capture the moment. On the rainbow chart, price has slipped into the bottom blue and purple bands, territory historically labeled "fire sale" that was last visited at the 2022 bear market bottom.<img src="https://academy-public.coinmarketcap.com/optimized-uploads/ff16aed92251477bbd43bd63b4fb3fd8.png">Source: Blockchaincenter (Bitcoin Rainbow Chart)On the long-term Power Law channel, BTC is pressing right against the red support line that has held every cycle since 2011.<img src="https://academy-public.coinmarketcap.com/optimized-uploads/6a410c7e1bad4c8d87493aaffbc6dac5.png">Source: Bitbo (Bitcoin Long-Term Power Law Chart)Notably, this drawdown has been relatively orderly. "This cycle Bitcoin is a 40 vol asset, last one it was 60 and time before that it was 80," Schwab's director of crypto research Jim Ferraioli <a href="https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/2064347746857869454" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">observed</a>, according to Bloomberg's Eric Balchunas. Ferraioli added that BTC is suffering from strong momentum elsewhere.That said, when measuring from the last cycle’s trough, the picture looks slightly rosier. From its 2022 low of ~$15,500, it's currently up over 300%. BTC also hit a peak return of +715.3% at its all-time high.<h2 id="why-has-bitcoin-price-shown-weakness">Why Has Bitcoin Price Shown Weakness?</h2><a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/etf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Spot Bitcoin ETFs</a>, the engine of the 2024-2025 rally, are partially to blame.They recently went into reverse with roughly $4.4 billion in outflows over a record 13-day streak, flipping 2026 flows negative for the first time since launch. BlackRock's IBIT alone lost $3.3 billion.These outflows haven't happened in a vacuum. A significant portion of crypto's recent weakness stems from external gravitational pulls and psychological shocks. Briefly, there was a major capital rotation from crypto to the increasingly crowded AI trade.<blockquote>Read more: <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/academy/article/strategy-bitcoin-sale-investors-ai-btc-price-altcoins" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Strategy Bitcoin Sale, Investor AI Pivot Send BTC and Altcoin Prices Tumbling</a></blockquote>Layer on hotter-than-expected inflation, soft GDP data, and the Iran conflict, and you get what one post-mortem described as a convergence of forces: macro fear drove ETF outflows, outflows drove price down, and falling price deepened the fear.It doesn’t help that Bitcoin has historically been correlated with software-as-a-service (SaaS) stocks, which have been crushed thanks to the meteoric rise of coding agents.<img src="https://academy-public.coinmarketcap.com/optimized-uploads/b59b0b48222c49dca58f5de42ad61337.png"><h2 id="the-4-year-bitcoin-cycle-and-the-4chan-prophet">The 4-Year Bitcoin Cycle and the 4chan Prophet</h2>Here's the uncomfortable part for anyone declaring the cycle dead: So far, everything is on schedule.In December 2023, an anonymous 4chan poster laid out a time-based model of roughly 1,064 days from bear market low to cycle top, followed by around 364 days of decline. That projected a top on Oct. 6, 2025. Bitcoin peaked that week.<img src="https://academy-public.coinmarketcap.com/optimized-uploads/73c14c6c9a944018b88286f721b64b55.png">A standard caveat applies: 4chan predictions suffer massive survivorship bias, and at least one viral "prophet returns" post has been debunked as fabricated. But this call is well documented and accepted as genuine.If the symmetry holds, the bottom would land in Q4 2026, consistent with the prior two cycles, where both the 2018 and 2022 lows arrived roughly 12 months after the top.Benjamin Cowen, the cycle's most prominent defender, didn’t blink in a recent X <a href="https://x.com/benjamincowen/status/2062510804277039295" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">post</a>: "The biggest critics of the Four Year Cycle for Bitcoin will become the biggest cheerleaders of it in a few months."<blockquote>Read more: <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/academy/article/clarity-act-crypto-us-bill-what-happens-if-passes" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">The CLARITY Act Is Close: What Happens if Crypto’s Biggest US Bill Passes?</a></blockquote><h2 id="when-will-bitcoin-price-bottom-and-how-will-we-know">When Will Bitcoin Price Bottom, and How Will We Know?</h2>A recovery beginning around Q4 2026 would be the strongest validation of cycle theory yet. Until then, there are a few tells to keep an eye on:Price levels: The 200-week moving average (around $62,000) has acted as bear market support since 2015. It was tagged in June for the first time this cycle. Below it sit a couple of on-chain floors: realized price near $54,000 and CVDD near $46,000, the zone Glassnode's co-founder calls the highest-probability bottom.<img src="https://academy-public.coinmarketcap.com/optimized-uploads/be8621e6596d46a88432b7326c6ef173.png">Capitulation signals: Supply held at a loss has crossed above supply held in profit, a condition that marked the lows of 2015, 2019, 2020, and 2022. CryptoQuant <a href="https://x.com/cryptoquant_com/status/2064375701487100324" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">notes </a>supply-in-loss above 50% has historically signaled "[Bitcoin-native] capitulation and formation of cycle bottom." Moreover, an <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/crypto-market-cycle-indicators/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">MVRV-Z reading </a>below 0 and a floor under the declining hash rate would be strong bottom signals.<img src="https://academy-public.coinmarketcap.com/optimized-uploads/10b0f3876f3a42d88d1119d25cc0723f.png">Apathy: This happens when volume dries up, price drifts sideways, and "Bitcoin is dead" obituaries pile up. Think mid-2015 or early 2019. We aren't there yet. The market is likely in the angry stage currently, which (by the cycle playbook) means the bottom is closer but still ahead. In other words, when articles like this one stop getting clicks, that's historically been a strong signal.And the catalysts—a strategic Bitcoin reserve, the<a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/academy/article/clarity-act-crypto-us-bill-what-happens-if-passes" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"> CLARITY Act</a>, the friendliest regulatory backdrop in Bitcoin's history, and expected Fed rate cuts—haven't gone anywhere.As Schwab's Ferraioli <a href="https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/2064349855024078951?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">put</a> it: "If you wait till [the] CLARITY Act or some other catalyst, you may be too late."Cycle theory says the worst isn't over. It also says the cycle itself isn’t, either.

What's Really Going On With Bitcoin Price and the BTC 4-Year Cycle?

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