Bitcoin’s Broken Cycle and Everything Traders Must Watch Out In 2026

📉 Bitcoin and the Growing Disappointment

On paper, Bitcoin $BTC ( ▼ 0.11% ) still looks strong!!!

It surged roughly 155% in 2023 and followed with about 121% in 2024, numbers that would normally silence most critics.

Despite those gains, Bitcoin has corrected around 6.34% this year according to the referenced data, and that small pullback feels much bigger than it should.

This frustration hits harder because of expectations. Based on the classic 4-year cycle, 2025 was supposed to be a growth year but it was not. This breakdown is forcing investors to question whether the 4-year cycle still works or not?

Yes, for the first time, the classic 4-year cycle is clearly misfiring. This year was statistically “supposed” to be a growth year, the familiar blue bar phase after the halving. Instead, we’re sitting in a negative year, a red bar where strength was expected. That shift alone is enough to unsettle anyone who has relied on historical cycles to guide their strategy.

The biggest reason for this change is large institutions and Wall Street firms are no longer observers. They are building products, especially spot ETFs, around Bitcoin. These institutions don’t trade cycles. They sell exposure, liquidity, and convenience. Their revenue comes from management fees and continuous capital inflows, not from waiting 4-year cycle for a perfect setup.

This is why the future feels uncertain, but also exciting. The way institutions operate today is fundamentally different from anything Bitcoin has experienced before. With ETFs and Wall Street products in play, market behavior is no longer driven purely by retail emotion or clean 4-year cycles. No one can say with confidence whether that cycle will fully reassert itself or gradually fade into something less predictable. What’s clear is that we’re entering a new chapter, where old rules may weaken and market structure starts to matter more than memorizing historical patterns.

When viewed through the lens of the Livermore speculative chart, this uncertainty actually makes sense. Livermore never believed markets moved by calendars, only by human behavior and positioning. Bitcoin’s current price action resembles a late accumulation - upward progress mixed with frustration, volatility, and repeated tests of conviction.

But according to Livermore’s logic, the most uncomfortable periods are often where the real foundation is built. In that sense, today’s confusion may not signal failure of Bitcoin’s thesis, but the formation of a new, rally structure beneath the surface.

🧃 Comparison with Gold and Silver

I know a lot of people aren’t happy about gold prices going up, and some are even saying that anyone investing in gold right now is foolish. But trust me, those investors actually deserve the gains they’re getting.

If you look at Gold $XAUUSD ( 0.0% ) , its success didn’t come quickly or comfortably.

Gold went through a brutal 10-year downtrend from 2010 to 2020, followed by another three years of sideways movement where nothing really happened. Only recently did it start moving decisively higher. Anyone holding gold during that entire period had to endure boredom, doubt, and years of people calling it “dead money.”

This is how patience is tested in a longer market cycle.

It is similar to silver $SILVER ( ▲ 8.01% ) . Silver’s story shows how brutal a prolonged market cycle can be for believers.

From around 2012 - 2013 up until 2023 - 2024, silver holders waited nearly a decade for meaningful appreciation. Long stretches of underperformance tested conviction again and again.

There was no hype cycle to lean on, no daily dopamine from fast gains. Just patience!

In the crypto market, many investors struggle to tolerate even one year of drawdown or sideways price action. Ten years feels unimaginable, almost insulting. And the people who truly believed, held through the pain, and ignored the noise earned the upside.

🧠 Conspiracy Theories and the Expanding Wealth Gap

For years, many investors have believed that the prices of Gold and Silver were intentionally suppressed. It is the fact that large institutions kept prices capped while they accumulated massive positions quietly, only allowing the market to rise once they were fully positioned.

Whether fully true or not, this narrative gained traction because price action stayed flat for far longer than fundamentals suggested. Prolonged stagnation like this often occurs during the most frustrating phases of a market cycle, when accumulation happens quietly and patience is tested.

The same theory is now being applied to Bitcoin. Many believe we’re in a prolonged FUD war, where large players dump or cap price to shake out weak hands and accumulate BTC at the lowest possible levels.

What makes this especially uncomfortable is the wealth gap it exposes.

Those who already have assets, such as U.S. stocks, real estate, and financial securities, have benefited enormously from decades of compounding growth. Meanwhile, those who don’t have much capital, often younger generations or lower-income investors, were drawn to crypto as a rare opportunity to catch up.

When volatility and suppression narratives collide, the pain is felt disproportionately by the people with the least margin for error. And that’s what makes this phase of the market feel not just financial, but deeply emotional.

🧱 Investment and Fundamental Arguments

I’ll be honest with you. I’m not good at calling tops or bottoms, and I’ve stopped pretending I am.

My approach is much simpler: I average in, I average out, and I manage risk. That’s the mindset is designed to survive an entire market cycle, not just one rally.

This kind of discipline doesn’t come from reading one chart or watching one cycle. It comes from experience, mistakes, and time in the market. You don’t learn this overnight, and anyone who says otherwise hasn’t been here long enough.

What really matters is what’s left after FOMO fades. Strip away the hype, the influencers, and the short-term narratives, and you’re left with the investment thesis.

Ask yourself a basic question: Has anything that’s happening right now changed the core nature of Bitcoin?

If governments continue to overspend, print money aggressively, and slowly erode the purchasing power of fiat currencies, then a digitally scarce asset capped at 21 million units still makes sense. That argument doesn’t disappear because of a bad quarter or a broken market cycle.

Then zoom out even further.

The world is clearly moving toward a digital-first system. Money, identity, assets, communication, everything is increasingly online. In that environment, a limited digital asset becomes logically valuable.

⚠ This newsletter is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. Traders should conduct thorough research, understand the risks, and carefully evaluate their decisions before investing in cryptocurrency.

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