Reflecting on history, what position is Bitcoin currently in within the cycle?

Today, let's mainly talk about Bitcoin. I hold a certain proportion of Bitcoin-related stocks. What is the current price level, and what is the expected trend over the next year? We need to analyze it.

1. The cyclicality of Bitcoin has a very obvious periodicity. Based on the past few cycles, it is basically a 4-year cycle, very stable! As for the reasons for the cycle, there are many opinions, but the core influencing factor is the Bitcoin halving event. The Bitcoin halving is a preset, automatically triggered event in the Bitcoin network, and its core mechanism aims to control the issuance speed of Bitcoin, ensuring that the total amount remains constant at 21 million coins, thereby building its scarcity value foundation.

The event is driven by the halving of the block reward for miners mining new Bitcoins approximately every 210,000 new blocks (about every four years).

The occurrence of each halving represents a decrease in the earnings obtained by miners for the same level of investment, leading some unprofitable miners to exit, which will delay the production of Bitcoin.

It can be understood that as the cost of gold mining increases and the amount of gold available for trading in the market decreases, the price goes up.

Therefore, shortly after the halving occurs, the price of Bitcoin will experience a surge. Once the price rises to a point where even with the halving of mining rewards there is still profit to be made, more people will participate in mining, leading to an increase in supply, and thereafter the price will show fluctuations.

Of course, since the production of Bitcoin is virtual and does not have a physical world mapping, its fluctuations and cycles do not completely follow the balance relationship of supply and demand.

There are also factors such as liquidity, social consensus, speculative frenzy, market sentiment, and so on.

But the final result shows that, starting from the halving cycle, the price reaches its peak 12-18 months later, and then begins to pull back; it takes another 12-18 months for the price to hit the bottom, and then starts to rebound, all the way until the start of the new halving.

2. Price fluctuations during the period

The most recent halving event is in April 2024, so let's take a look at what position we are currently in within the cycle.

The above table summarizes the price trends of Bitcoin over the recent 4 cycles, and it can be seen that:

The price reaches its peak 12-18 months after the halving, with the peak price increasing at least double compared to the halving.
The retracement after the peak is astonishing, reaching up to 80%.
It generally takes 13 months from the high point to the low point of the periodic rebound.

Now let's take a look back at the performance of this round of the cycle:
1) The 18th month after the halving in April 2024 (October 2025) saw a peak, with Bitcoin nearing $130,000.
2) After the high point, it retraced to the low point of 80,000 dollars, with a retracement of 36%;
Low point took only 1 month

If we look at the trends from previous cycles, the current $80,000 does not seem to be a true low point, as the retracement is only 36%, far from the scale of retracements seen in previous cycles.

Additionally, the cycle is too short, or even if 80,000 dollars is the low point, it is not yet the turning point for Bitcoin's price rebound; the market will need at least 6-12 months to stabilize and recover.

Of course, due to the significant improvements in policies and social environment related to Bitcoin over the past two years, there are many voices indicating that this time might be different. If it is indeed different, what trends can we expect in the market moving forward?

3. Future price trends and investment strategies will be illustrated from three perspectives: optimistic, neutral, and pessimistic.
Pessimistic: 80,000 is not the price bottom, and the decline must be at least close to 60%-70%, meaning the price will fall below 50,000 dollars; moreover, considering the timeline, it will take until the second half of 2026 to stabilize and start to rise.
In the medium term: 80,000 is the price bottom, but the price will oscillate between 80,000 and 100,000 until the second half of 2026, when it will begin to enter an upward channel.
Optimistic: 80,000 is the price bottom, and the pullback period has significantly shortened, with an increase expected to start in the first half of 2026.

Different people have different judgments as to which of the three they are more inclined to. Since the future is unpredictable, we can only adjust our positions based on the risks and rewards we can accept in different situations among the three.

$BTC ‌