Traders who rely on Bitcoin’s traditional four-year cycle may be relying on a framework that no longer fits the market, says Matt Crosby, lead analyst at Bitcoin Magazine Pro. In his latest analysis, Crosby argues that structural shifts in institutional supply and demand and aggregate liquidity are now more important than the old halving rules of the game.
The old rules of the game of Bitcoin are collapsing
The essence of Crosby claim It’s pretty straightforward: Bitcoin is probably already trading in a different system. Pointing to the fact that more than 20 million bitcoins are now in circulation, he said that more than 95% of the total final supply has already been issued, which reduces the relative shock value of each new halving. Historically, halvings have halved Bitcoin’s inflation rate and helped form a familiar pattern of post-halving rallies, then drawdowns and recoveries in the next cycle. This pattern may be losing steam now, Crosby said.
“A lot of people are looking to previous cycles as a possibility of what Bitcoin will do this time,” he said. “We can’t hit bottom any time soon. We have to wait until at least a year from that peak, because that’s what we’ve always done.” Crosby pushed back on that reasoning, adding that he had “concrete evidence” as to why the ancient cycle should not be treated as the base case.
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In his view, much of this evidence comes from demand. Crosby highlighted the amount of accumulation now coming from major buyers of Treasuries Spot Bitcoin ETFsSaying The strategy alone has been gained More than 1,000 bitcoins per day, or roughly two to three times the daily inflation rate of bitcoin. He also pointed to the last day in which spot ETFs bought nearly $750 million worth of Bitcoin. He said that this type of sustained demand differs materially from the market structure seen in previous cycles.
Rather than relying on calendar-based or seasonal cycle models, Crosby said investors should monitor liquidity and broader macro conditions. He noted that there is a long-term correlation of 96.26% between the S&P 500 and the S&P 500. Global liquidity M2along with a 93% correlation between Bitcoin and the S&P over a 15-year period on a monthly basis. Bitcoin itself shows an 85% correlation to global liquidity, reinforcing the idea that liquidity expansion and contraction remain the dominant force behind major moves, he said.
Crosby also challenged the seasonality of the election cycle. While Bitcoin’s mid-term years have sometimes posted strong average returns, he noted that the average returns are negative and the sample size remains weak. In contrast, gold and stocks do not show the same type of clean political cycle pattern. For Crosby, this makes seasonality a poor basis for market calls.
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He also said that bitcoin looks different when measured against gold rather than the US dollar. On this basis, he said that Bitcoin may have peaked in late 2024 and has already spent more than a year in a relative bearish phase, likely bottoming out around February 2026. He suggested that this was another sign of… Four-year classic course It’s already starting to fall apart.
Crosby said the most actionable signals come from on-chain and macro indicators. He pointed to destructive currency days and destructive value days as tools that have historically identified key peaks and attractive accumulation areas, and said that Bitcoin has recently returned to territory that was previously aligned with currency depreciation. Meanwhile, he noted that US consumer confidence in April 2026 fell to 47.6%, which he called the lowest reading on record, while manufacturing expectations and liquidity conditions began to improve.
“At some point, this four-year cycle is bound to break,” Crosby said. “We’re seeing new liquidity coming into the system. We’re seeing the S&P 500 rising. We’re seeing more positivity in the manufacturing outlook, and we’re seeing incredible negativity, not just in Bitcoin, but in sentiment across the stock markets as well.”
His conclusion was not that the danger had disappeared. The point was that the market might no longer reward waiting for an “arbitrary date on the calendar.” If Crosby is right, Bitcoin’s next big move will be shaped less by legacy cycle traditions than by the harder forces of liquidity, positioning, and sustained institutional demand.
At press time, Bitcoin was trading at $78,144.
Featured image created with DALL.E, a chart from TradingView.com
