The Four-Year Cycle of Bitcoin

Following this pattern is simple—just look at the calendar.
By time, we can see the top dates of each BTC bull market.
December 17, 2017; November 10, 2021; October 7, 2025
The bottom dates of each BTC bear market.
January 14, 2015; December 15, 2018; November 22, 2022
It’s always about 4 years apart, so we define it as a 4-year cycle.
Why is there a cycle like this?
Because Bitcoin is different from traditional assets. Stocks can be issued in additional shares, and money can be overissued—at their core, it’s all controlled by humans who can manage supply. But Bitcoin isn’t. It’s mined through a global competition among miners using computing power, and no one can just print an extra coin.
The rule is set from the start: every time 210,000 blocks are mined, the reward is halved—about once every 4 years. This is what’s called the halving.
The core of the 4-year cycle is essentially that the rate of supply growth keeps declining.
At first, it produces this much every day; after the halving, it’s cut directly in half. If demand stays the same—even if it keeps growing—prices naturally get pushed upward. That’s also why, in the past few cycles, after each halving, the market has seen a big rally.
Just like there are four seasons in a year—there’s both cold and hot, planting and harvesting. The market is the same: there are bear markets and bull markets, times when assets are undervalued, and times when sentiment goes crazy.
What you truly need to do isn’t to predict every fluctuation, but to position yourself within the right cycle as much as possible.
Gradually build your positions when prices are low, and gradually realize profits when prices are high. It sounds simple, but in the long run, this is one of the few things that are truly effective.
Many people keep losing money because they always want to buy at the lowest and sell at the highest—but in reality, this kind of perfect execution almost never exists.
And the meaning of the cycle is that it gives you a rough framework—you don’t have to guess every step. As long as you don’t make a mistake with the overall direction, you’re already ahead of most people.
Whether the 4-year cycle can help you depends on one thing: whether you believe it.
I know there will definitely be people who don’t believe it, and there will definitely be people who believe it.
For example, people calling for a slow bull market in 25 and a super cycle in 26 January—they don’t believe. If they’re really consistent in both knowing and doing, they should already be down by now.