Bitcoin Cycle Paradox: It Exists Forever Because of “Disbelief”

When Bitcoin drops from $126,000 to the $90,000 mark, predictions about the “four-year cycle failure” are once again proven wrong. This market rhythm, which has operated with precision since Bitcoin’s birth in 2009, still demonstrates astonishing effectiveness in 2025. Behind this lies a counterintuitive market truth: it is precisely the majority’s skepticism toward the pattern that enables its continuation.

1. Halving Mechanism: The Minting Clock of Digital Gold

Bitcoin’s four-year cycle originates from Satoshi Nakamoto’s scarcity mechanism design—block rewards for miners are automatically halved every 210,000 blocks (about four years). This design mimics the natural increasing difficulty of gold mining, yet it has created unprecedented predictability in financial history.

Historical data shows remarkable consistency: after each of the three halvings (2012, 2016, 2020), a bull market lasting about a year followed. More precisely, the window from the halving date to the price peak has remained stable at 368-518 days, a regularity far exceeding the random walk characteristics of traditional financial asset cycles.

2. Market Paradox: The Failure Dilemma of Known Effectiveness

According to the efficient market hypothesis, when a pattern becomes widely recognized, arbitrage behavior will price in expectations in advance, causing the pattern to fail. A classic case appeared in 2021: some overseas analysts used cycle models to accurately predict a peak in October 2025, which should have triggered early sell-offs and broken the cycle.

But in reality, even though the theory that “halving brings a bull market” has become common knowledge in the crypto space since 2019, the duration and depth of the current bull-bear transition still closely match historical norms. This forms one of the most paradoxical phenomena in modern financial markets—a widely known pattern has not collapsed due to consensus.

3. Behavioral Finance Decoded: The Gap Between Cognition and Action

The core answer lies in the human divide described by behavioral finance. Market participants display a typical “three-layer distrust”:

First layer: Informational distrust. About 60% of holders see the halving as background noise, without establishing a cycle framework. They chase hot topics and narratives but lack understanding of the underlying mechanism.

Second layer: Experiential distrust. Even if they know the theory, most investors are captured by the “this time is different” sentiment. In 2021, people claimed “institutional entry changes the cycle,” and in 2025, they hope “ETFs bring an eternal bull market”—fundamentally a deliberate ignoring of historical experience.

Third layer: Operational distrust. Fewer than 5% of participants “carve the mark on the boat” and strictly follow cycle strategies. Human greed and loss aversion cause the vast majority to buy at bull market peaks and sell at bear market bottoms, running counter to cycle theory.

This systemic divergence between “rational cognition” and “emotional action” creates a self-fulfilling market structure. When most people doubt the cycle, their irrational trading provides fuel for the cycle’s operation—there are not enough early buyers at the bottom and not enough sellers at the top, allowing historical rhythms to fully play out.

4. The Spiral of Doubt: Reflexivity Reinforcement Mechanism

Even more interesting is the self-reinforcing nature of cycle skepticism. Every bull market breeds the “cycle is over” theory, luring skeptics to chase the top; every bear market triggers panic that “Bitcoin is dead,” causing skeptics to sell at a loss. This doubt-driven buying high and selling low actually purifies the faith in the cycle, rewarding the few steadfast believers with excess returns.

Data shows that since 2019, the proportion of opinion leaders who explicitly claim “the four-year cycle will break” has risen from 23% to 67% in 2025. However, on-chain data simultaneously shows the share of long-term holders (>1 year) remains stable at 55%-60%. This indicates that skepticism mainly exists among speculators, while the value layer’s belief in the cycle is increasingly solid.

5. Conclusion: The Cycle Exists Because of Disbelief

The sustained effectiveness of Bitcoin’s four-year cycle is essentially a bet on the consistency of human behavior. As long as the market is driven by human nature, the paradox of “knowing but not believing” will continue to play out. As analysts busily argue for a “paradigm shift,” the minting clock quietly ticks toward the next halving; as traders are dominated by FOMO, the path of the cycle has already laid out the next direction.

So-called patterns never die in consensus, but live forever in the cracks of human nature. For those who truly understand this, the cycle never disappears; for the half-believing speculators, the cycle is always on the verge of disappearing. This may be Satoshi Nakamoto’s most exquisite philosophical gift to the market: the most worth believing in is precisely what most people are unwilling to believe.

Bitcoin price at the time of writing: $89,600

Risk Warning: Historical patterns do not represent future performance. Cryptocurrency investments are extremely risky. The views in this article do not constitute investment advice.
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