BITCOIN: WHAT IF THE FOUR-YEAR CYCLE WAS DEAD?

For years, Bitcoin seemed to obey an almost religious clock. Roughly every four years, the halving reduced the miners' reward. New supply decreased. The market woke up. Narratives resurfaced. Veterans told newcomers they needed to be patient. Then came the rally, the euphoria, the absurd predictions, the wallet screenshots, the improvised experts, the cousins asking if it was still time to buy, and finally the crash. A cycle. Another one. As if Bitcoin, for all its radicality, remained trapped by an old metronome.

This narrative structured Bitcoin's imagination for over a decade. It was simple, powerful, almost comforting. Accumulation before the halving. Tension after the halving. Explosion. Excess. Clean-up. Winter. Then restart. Historical charts seemed to confirm it. Dates changed, characters too, but the structure returned. The four-year cycle had become a mental compass. For some, almost a natural law. But one question becomes impossible to avoid: what if this compass is breaking?

Not because Bitcoin would have changed. The protocol has not abandoned its rules. The halving still exists. Roughly every 210,000 blocks, the miners' reward is halved. Since April 2024, this reward is 3.125 BTC per block. Programmed scarcity remains intact. The 21 million remain untouchable. The network continues to advance block after block, without a monetary committee, without a central bank, without a press conference. From this point of view, nothing has changed. But the market around Bitcoin has changed. And this is perhaps where the old cycle begins to die.

Amberdata states it bluntly in its 2026 outlook: according to their analysis, the halving cycle is over as the dominant price driver. The reason is simple: flows from spot Bitcoin ETFs would now move daily volumes significantly greater than the new mined supply. Amberdata indicates that ETF flows can represent about twelve times the daily supply from mining, making institutional flows the marginal price driver, much more than the selling pressure from miners. This sentence changes everything.

For a long time, the halving was powerful because it directly altered the mechanics of new supply. Less BTC entered the market. If demand increased or remained strong, the imbalance could cause a spectacular rise. This logic has not disappeared. It remains true in theory. But it becomes less central if the incoming and outgoing flows of ETFs massively exceed the daily impact of new issuance. In other words: the halving still reduces supply. But Wall Street can now move demand much faster.

This is where the old world of the simple cycle cracks. Before, we looked at miners. Today, we need to look at ETFs. Before, we mainly looked at issuance. Today, we need to look at institutional flows, global liquidity, US rates, risk appetite, corporate treasuries, regulators, banks, capital outflows, BlackRock's movements, fund allocations, and investment committees that have never read a line of the white paper but can move billions. Bitcoin has not changed. The stage around it has filled with new actors. And these actors do not have the same relationship with time.

The four-year cycle was a story of patience. It asked to wait. To accumulate. To endure boredom. To get through winters. It rewarded those who understood programmed scarcity before the crowd. But institutional capital does not always think in cycles of conviction. It thinks in flows, arbitrage, risks, rates, liquidity, relative performance. It enters if Bitcoin becomes attractive in a portfolio. It exits if the dollar strengthens, if bond yields rise, if clients de-risk, if volatility becomes too heavy or if the macro deteriorates. This is not hodl. This is management. And management can dominate the short term.

This is why the old model becomes insufficient. It is no longer enough to say: "The halving happened, so the rally will come." This reasoning may still have some truth to it, but it is too poor to describe the current market. The halving acts as a slow structural force. ETFs and macro act as fast forces. A daily reduction in supply can support a long-term trend, but a massive institutional flow can crush that logic for weeks or months. It's brutal, but it's the reality of a mature market. A young market obeys its own internal myths more. An institutionalized market also obeys the forces of the system it attracts.

Here's the paradox. Bitcoin was created to escape the fiat system, but its price is increasingly influenced by the conditions of the fiat system. Fed rates, bond yields, inflation expectations, global liquidity, ETFs, institutional balance sheets, geopolitical risks, capital outflows: all of this now weighs on Bitcoin. Not on the protocol. On the price. The protocol remains sovereign. The market, however, remains nervous.

It is therefore necessary to make a fundamental distinction. The four-year cycle may be dead as a simple price model, without the halving becoming useless. Programmed scarcity remains the core of Bitcoin. But scarcity does not act alone. It meets demand. And demand is no longer solely that of individuals, crypto exchanges, miners, and internal cycles. It is now mediated by Wall Street, by ETFs, by banks, by companies, by funds, and by an unstable global macroeconomy. It's less romantic. But more serious.

A more mature Bitcoin does not mean a more predictable Bitcoin. It may even be the opposite. When it was smaller, its cycles seemed more readable because fewer external forces traversed it. Today, Bitcoin is bigger, more watched, more integrated, more liquid, more institutional. It attracts more powerful capital, but also colder capital. It gains legitimacy, but loses some of its narrative simplicity. The old cycle was reassuring because it provided an easy story to tell. Today, the story becomes more complicated.

It's no longer enough to look at the halving date. You have to look at who holds. Who buys. Who sells. Where the flows go. How much is in self-custody. How much is in ETFs. How much is held by companies. How much becomes collateral. How much truly sleeps. How much can be withdrawn with a click from a financial product. The Bitcoin market is no longer just an arena of believers, traders, and miners. It is a hybrid architecture where ultra-convinced hodlers, opportunistic banks, tactical funds, curious states, corporate treasuries, giant ETFs, and individuals who don't always know if they truly own or are simply exposed coexist.

In this context, the question "is the cycle dead?" must be asked precisely. The psychological cycle is not dead. Fear, euphoria, greed, despair, FOMO, capitulation, all remain deeply human. Markets change tools, not brains. Investors will continue to buy too late, sell too early, believe that this time everything is different, then swear they won't be fooled again before restarting the next cycle. Market psychology does not disappear because an ETF exists. It just wears a more expensive suit. But the mechanical cycle, however, may be weakened.

Before, the halving was the big event around which everything revolved. Today, it becomes one force among others. It continues to reduce issuance. It continues to remind us of scarcity. It continues to be part of the deep narrative of Bitcoin. But it may no longer be the sole conductor. ETFs can accelerate or slow down. Macro can amplify or neutralize. Companies can absorb supply. Regulators can open or close doors. Banks can sell exposure while domesticating the narrative. The market is no longer a metronome. It's a battle of flows. And this battle of flows creates a new risk: believing that Bitcoin has become just another asset.

This is false. Bitcoin has not become a tech stock. It has not become a bond. It has not become an ETF. It has not become a line in a 60/40 portfolio. But a part of the market treats it as such. In the short term, this is enough to influence the price. In the long term, it does not change its nature. The tension between these two realities is precisely what makes Bitcoin so difficult to understand in 2026. In the short term, Bitcoin can fall because ETFs sell. In the long term, Bitcoin remains scarce because no one can modify the 21 million. In the short term, Bitcoin can react to US rates.

In the long term, Bitcoin exists precisely because political currencies depend on human decisions. In the short term, Bitcoin can be treated as a risky asset. In the long term, Bitcoin remains an attempt to escape a system based on debt, dilution, and forced trust. The four-year cycle was comfortable because it allowed us to avoid this complexity. It was enough to look at the clock. Now, we must look at the world. And the world is much less clean than a chart.

It must also be understood that the effect of halving mechanically decreases over time. The first halvings were gigantic in proportion to the new supply. Going from 50 to 25 BTC per block, then from 25 to 12.5, then from 12.5 to 6.25, was to reduce an still significant emission. Today, going from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC remains fundamental for scarcity, but the absolute impact on the market is smaller compared to institutional volumes. The bigger Bitcoin gets, the more capital it takes to move the price. Scarcity remains decisive, but it is no longer enough to explain every move. The halving becomes less a magical trigger than a structural reminder. And perhaps that is for the best.

Because the old cycle also had a condescending side. It pushed some investors to await a pre-written scenario. Halving, rally, peak, exit, repurchase lower. As if Bitcoin were a machine to enrich the patient according to a public calendar. But a market does not eternally allow a simple strategy to work without making it more difficult. When too many people look at the same signal, the signal changes its nature. The four-year cycle may have been real. Then it became too famous. And what becomes too famous often ends up being arbitraged, anticipated, distorted, broken. This is not a tragedy. It is a maturation.

Bitcoin doesn't need the four-year cycle to survive to remain important. It doesn't need a bull run perfectly aligned with the halving to justify its existence. It doesn't need to repeat 2013, 2017, or 2021 like a tired band replaying its old hit on tour. Bitcoin can enter a new phase, perhaps less explosive, more institutional, more turbulent, more macro, more political, more geopolitical, more integrated into the system it criticizes. This does not make it less radical. It only makes its interpretation more demanding. The real question is therefore not: is the cycle dead?

The real question is: are we capable of understanding Bitcoin without clinging to a magical calendar? If the answer is no, then many will be lost. They will wait for a mechanical rally that doesn't come at the right time. They will panic if Bitcoin doesn't follow the historical scenario. They will cry that the model is dead. They will probably sell because reality doesn't match their favorite chart. Then they will buy back higher when a new narrative appears. The human routine, again and again. If the answer is yes, then Bitcoin becomes more interesting.

Because we stop seeing it as a speculative seasonality. We see it as a monetary asset in the process of globalization, traversed by contradictory forces. Absolute scarcity in a world of debt. Direct digital ownership in a world of platforms. A currency without a central bank in a world obsessed with rates. A neutral protocol in a world of sanctions. A potential reserve in a world where states print, borrow, and manipulate. A free asset that Wall Street is trying to make comfortable. It's deeper than a cycle.

And this is where 100Blocks must stay on the right track. We must not become prisoners of old narratives, even when they suit us. The halving is important. The historical cycle existed. Patterns have educational value. But Bitcoin is not a graphical superstition. Just because an event has repeated itself several times does not mean it becomes an eternal law. The protocol is mathematical. The market, however, is human. And humans change when incentives change.

ETFs have changed incentives. Banks are changing incentives. Corporate treasuries are changing incentives. BTC-backed loans are changing incentives. States looking at Bitcoin are changing incentives. Miners arbitrating between Bitcoin and AI are changing incentives. Financial surveillance, CBDCs, geopolitics, stablecoins, US debt, all of this is changing the landscape in which Bitcoin operates. It would be almost naive to believe that the price would continue to follow the exact same script.

But beware: saying that the four-year cycle is dead does not mean that Bitcoin will no longer experience violent surges or brutal corrections. It will still experience them. Volatility will not disappear because Wall Street has entered. ETFs do not make Bitcoin tame. They can even amplify certain movements. When flows come in, they absorb. When flows go out, they hit. Volatility does not die. It changes channels. It's no longer just the miner who sells. It's the manager who reallocates. It's no longer just retail panicking. It's the fund reducing exposure. It's no longer just the crypto exchange setting the pace. It's the global liquidity market.

Bitcoin is getting bigger, so its tremors are becoming more connected to the rest of the world. We must therefore abandon two illusions. The first: believing that the old cycle guarantees the future. The second: believing that institutionalization makes Bitcoin stable. Both are false. The old cycle can break. The new market can remain violent. The only thing that doesn't change is the protocol rule. And that is perhaps the best news. In a world where narratives change, where cycles deform, where ETFs modify flows, where macro crushes certainties, where analysts announce the death or rebirth of a model every six months, Bitcoin continues to impose the same limit. Block after block. Halving after halving. 21 million. No more. The cycle can die. Scarcity remains. That's where the compass must be placed.

Not in the naive belief that a historical pattern will repeat mechanically. Not in the idea that Wall Street has replaced everything. Not in the fear that the old world of Bitcoin is over. But in a more mature understanding: the halving remains a profound force, while institutional flows have become a dominant short-term force. The two coexist. One acts on the structure. The other acts on the surface. The danger is to confuse the surface with the truth. The price will say many things. It will often lie. The protocol, for its part, says nothing. It executes.

This is perhaps the end of the four-year cycle: not the end of Bitcoin, nor the end of the halving, nor the end of bull markets, but the end of an oversimplified interpretation. The Bitcoin market is maturing, which means it is becoming more complicated, more political, more institutional, more integrated, more manipulated by flows, more sensitive to macro, but also more important. A child may believe in perfect seasons. An adult looks at the weather, maps, winds, clouds, and the terrain's structure. Bitcoin is entering that age.

The four-year cycle was a good story. Perhaps even a true story for a time. But Bitcoin has never been just a story of cycles. It's a story of scarcity, sovereignty, verification, ownership, monetary resistance. If the old cycle dies, we shouldn't panic. We just need to stop confusing the map with the territory. Bitcoin doesn't need the past to repeat perfectly. It only needs the future to continue to need a currency that no one can print.

To understand Bitcoin in depth, from its creation by Satoshi Nakamoto to its role in the global economy, it is essential to master its foundations. Here are the key pages to discover Bitcoin, its operation, its importance, and its evolution: