Bitcoin’s New Paradigm and Mid-Cycle Adjustment

Bitcoin & Markets | September 24, 2026

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The Missing Bull Market

The period from 2023 through 2025 was a bull market, right? What if I told you it wasn’t, at least not a bitcoin bull market in the historical sense?

Bitcoin’s previous bull markets followed a well-known four-year cycle, but they also coincided with improving economic conditions signaled by expanding PMI. During the 2023–2025 period, the broader economic environment remained in a mild contraction.

Bitcoin bull markets have also typically ended with a parabolic blow-off top. The 2023–2025 period was completely different. Price followed a slow, methodical and nearly linear climb before forming a rounded top.

Previous bitcoin bull markets carried price several multiples above the prior cycle’s high. In 2025, the new all-time high was only 85% above the 2021 high. That is not what a typical bitcoin bull market looks like.

Interestingly, the 2025 top arrived exactly on schedule for the four-year cycle, on October 6. If the four-year cycle is dead, what explains that timing?

People who continue promoting the four-year-cycle model now claim the bear-market bottom is not in and will arrive this October. Should we really expect bitcoin to roll over and make another lower low simply because the calendar says so?

In my opinion, the four-year cycle is dead. I could be wrong, but the evidence is increasingly clear: a linear advance, no blow-off top, a relatively mild bitcoin bear market and a poor underlying economic environment.

I think the October 6 top was an echo of the old four-year cycle. Bitcoin once had a strong cycle, but its timing has now become a Schelling point, or focal point, for market participants. Traders expected a top during that window, positioned for it and took profits accordingly. Enough people continued acting as though the four-year cycle controlled the market that they created a weaker echo of it.

Mid-Cycle Correction

Throughout the last several weeks and months that I've been watching and writing about the bitcoin chart, similarities with the 2019–2020 period have repeatedly popped up.

In 2019, PMI was slowing (though still expanding), while bitcoin was ripping higher from its bear market lows. The 2024-2025 supposed bull market, the PMI situation was even more bearish, and price managed to creeped upward. The 2019-2020 mid-cycle correction was a mild, by bitcoin standards, 50-60% drawdown, and the bear market we're coming out of right now was also mild at 54% from the ATH.

I took the 2019 high and the subsequent candle pattern, then copied and pasted it onto the October 2025 all-time high. The similarity was somewhat shocking.

The drawdown occurred at almost exactly the same speed, and the bottom arrived the same number of weeks after the previous high. So far, the recovery has also followed a remarkably similar path.

When this repeat pattern is taken together with the PMI data, the mid-cycle adjustment theory becomes quite compelling.

My base case right now is for the main push higher to happen sooner than this chart would predict. It shows not breaking the previous high until mid-February, where I think we can threaten the ATH already by the end of this year. I also don't expect the price to get all the way to $400k represented on the chart. A long-term swing high of $200k is more realistic, but $400k is not unreasonable.

The central point is that 2023–2025 may not have been bitcoin’s main bull market at all. It may have been a large mid-cycle advance and correction, similar to 2019–2020 but unfolding on a much larger price scale. If that interpretation is correct, the missing bitcoin bull market is still ahead of us.

Finally, notice that I called $200,000 a long-term swing high rather than a cycle top. If the four-year cycle is dead, there is no reason to remain trapped in the traditional bull-market-to-bear-market paradigm. Bitcoin does not necessarily need to enter another prolonged bear market after reaching its next major high. Price could consolidate sideways within a relatively narrow range for years before resuming its advance. It could also sell off sharply, recover quickly and continue higher.

The old cycle gave us a familiar roadmap: parabolic bull market, blow-off top, year-long bear market and eventual recovery. That roadmap no longer needs to apply. We are entering a new era for bitcoin, and we should remain open to entirely different price structures.

Anyway, that's all for this short update on the bitcoin price. Thanks for your support, and please share this with anyone you think would find it valuable.

HODL strong. Thanks for reading! PLEASE SHARE!

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