When Bitcoin fell from $126,000 to the $90,000 mark, the prophecy of the "failure of the four-year cycle" was once again debunked. This market rhythm, which has been operating accurately since its inception in 2009, continues to show astonishing effectiveness in 2025. This reveals an counterintuitive market truth: it is precisely the skepticism of the majority towards the rules that sustains the continuation of the rules themselves.
1. Halving Mechanism: The Minting Clock of Digital Gold
The four-year cycle of Bitcoin originates from the scarcity mechanism designed by Satoshi Nakamoto—every 210,000 blocks (approximately four years), the block reward for miners is automatically halved. This design mimics the natural law of increasing difficulty in gold mining, yet it has created unprecedented predictability in financial history.
Historical data shows astonishing consistency: after three halvings (2012, 2016, 2020), a bull market lasting about a year followed. More precisely, the time window from halving day to price peak stabilizes between 368-518 days, a regularity far exceeding the random walk characteristics of traditional financial asset cycles.
Two, Market Paradox: The Failure Dilemma of Known Effectiveness
According to the Efficient Market Hypothesis, when the market widely recognizes a certain pattern, arbitrage activities will preemptively digest expectations, leading to the pattern's failure. A typical case emerged in 2021: some overseas analysts accurately predicted a peak in October 2025 through cyclical models, which should have triggered a rush to sell and undermined the cycle.
But the reality is: despite the theory that 'halving brings bull markets' becoming common knowledge in the crypto space since 2019, the duration and extent of this round's bull-bear transition still align closely with historical highs. This constitutes one of the most paradoxical phenomena in modern financial markets—widely known patterns have not collapsed due to consensus.
Three, Decoding Behavioral Finance: The Gap Between Cognition and Action
The core answer lies in the human chasm of behavioral finance. Market participants exhibit a typical 'three-layer disbelief':
Layer One: Informational Disbelief. About 60% of holders view halving merely as background noise, without establishing a cyclical framework. They chase trends and believe narratives, yet lack understanding of the underlying mechanisms.
Layer Two: Empirical Disbelief. Even when understanding the theory, most investors are still captured by the emotion of 'this time is different'. In 2021, there was a push that 'institutional entry changes the cycle', and in 2025, hopes for 'ETFs bring eternal bull markets', which essentially represents a deliberate disregard for historical experience.
Layer Three: Operational Disbelief. Less than 5% of participants will execute cyclical strategies in a 'carving the boat to look for the sword' manner. Human greed and loss aversion lead most to increase positions at the peak of a bull market and exit at the bottom of a bear market, contradicting cyclical theory.
This systematic divergence between 'rational cognition' and 'emotional action' creates a self-fulfilling market structure. When the majority doubt the cycle, their irrational trading ironically fuels the cycle's operation—there aren't enough early bottom fishers, and not enough peak exiters, allowing historical rhythms to be fully replicated.
Four, the Spiral of Doubt: Reflexivity Reinforcement Mechanism
Interestingly, the self-reinforcing nature of cyclical skepticism emerges. Each bull market gives rise to the 'end of the cycle theory', attracting skeptics to chase higher; each bear market triggers panic of 'Bitcoin is dead', leading skeptics to cut losses. This doubt-based buy high, sell low behavior, in turn, purifies the gold content of cyclical belief, enabling a few steadfast individuals to achieve excess returns.
Data shows that since 2019, the proportion of opinion leaders clearly stating 'the four-year cycle will break' has risen from 23% to 67% in 2025. However, on-chain data simultaneously shows that the proportion of long-term holders (>1 year) remains stable in the range of 55%-60%. This indicates that the voices of skepticism primarily exist at the speculative level, while the belief in cycles at the value level is becoming increasingly solid.
Five, Conclusion: The Cycle Persists Due to 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 still driven by humanity, the paradox of 'knowing but not believing' will continue to play out. While analysts are busy arguing for 'paradigm shifts', the minting clock quietly ticks towards the next halving; when traders are dominated by FOMO, the cyclical path has already laid out the direction for the next stop.
The so-called pattern never dies in consensus but lives on in the cracks of humanity. For those who truly understand this, the cycle has never disappeared; for the half-believing speculators, the cycle is always on the path of disappearance. Perhaps this is the most ingenious philosophy left by Satoshi Nakamoto to the market: what is most worth believing is precisely what most people are unwilling to believe.
Bitcoin price at the time of writing: $89,600
Risk Warning: Historical patterns do not guarantee future performance; cryptocurrency investments carry extremely high risks, and the views in this article do not constitute investment advice.#比特币VS代币化黄金 #加密市场观察 #中美贸易谈判 $BTC
