Bitcoin's (CRYPTO: BTC) so-called four-year cycle is cracking apart, with new analysis claiming the narrative survives on bad stats and cherry-picked charts.
New Research Challenges Halving-Linked Cycle Claims
Analysts argue that the halving has always been known in advance, meaning markets continuously discount it rather than react cyclically.
The notion that BTC resets every four years ignores how investors price information into markets daily, not at multi-year intervals.
The critique highlights that BTC's entire history contains only four such "cycles," offering far too little data to confirm a repeating pattern.
Treating four observations as a robust statistical sample creates the illusion of a reliable framework where none exists.
Multiple Testing And Survivorship Bias Undermine Cycle Theory
A key flaw is the multiple testing problem.
With enough backtesting across thousands of potential timeframes, some periods will appear statistically significant by chance.
Analysts note that many cycle proponents unintentionally cherry-pick the periods that look cyclical while discarding the rest, creating a false sense of predictability.
Survivorship bias adds to the issue as popular models such as PlanB's Stock-to-Flow gained prominence when price happened to align with their forecasts, only to fail in later periods.
As those models break, new ones emerge, giving the illusion that the cycle persists even as predictions repeatedly shift.
Non-Stationarity Limits Predictive Power In A Changing Market
Critics also point to non-stationarity — the idea that the statistical behavior of BTC changes over time.
Liquidity, derivatives structure, institutional participation, regulatory landscape, and miner economics have all evolved dramatically since 2009.
A pattern observed during Bitcoin's early low-liquidity era is unlikely to apply to its current market structure.
As market regimes shift, any model built on outdated parameters rapidly loses predictive power. This makes the four-year cycle particularly vulnerable to structural change.
Curve Fitting And Non-Falsifiability Erode Model Credibility
Most visual cycle charts rely on curve fitting as analysts can adjust log scales, trendline angles, smoothing functions, and starting points to make nearly any upward-drifting asset appear cyclical.
When price deviates, the cycle is often "re-drawn" rather than abandoned, making the hypothesis non-falsifiable.
Chicago-based attorney and Bitcoin advocate Joe Carlasare summarized the sentiment in a recent X post, urging traders to "free your mind" of four-year narratives and focus instead on actual price structure and liquidity dynamics.
Bitcoin Technical Picture: Buyers Defend Key Fib Support
Bitcoin Technical Analysis (Source: TradingView)
BTC is attempting to stabilize after defending support at the $86,700 area, which aligns with the 0.382 Fibonacci retracement of the prior rally.
Buyers have pushed price back above $91,500, although the rebound remains corrective while BTC trades below the 20-day and 50-day EMAs at $93,200 and $100,500.
The broader structure remains capped by the descending channel that has rejected every rally since the $124,000 peak.
A break above the $93,800 to $97,000 resistance band is needed to confirm momentum rotation.
Failure to reclaim the 0.5 and 0.618 retracement levels keeps downside targets open toward $86,700 and $81,900.
Short-term indicators show improving momentum, but traders view the move as relief until BTC closes decisively above the EMA cluster near $100,500.
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