Bitcoin’s Volatile Week Spurs a Bigger Question: Has the Clock on the Halving Cycle Been Reset?
At 04:00 UTC on Monday, Bitcoin sank to an uneasy $107,000. Twelve hours
later a wave of leveraged short liquidations snapped the price back to
$110,000, leaving traders staring at the chart’s V-shaped scar and
wondering whether they had just witnessed the first crack in the current bull
run—or merely the prelude to something longer.
Monday’s Whiplash and the Whisper of Exhaustion
The violent rebound offered little comfort to skeptics who have spent the past
month tallying lower highs and a steady bleed of coins from “diamond-hand”
wallets. Technical desks at two major U.S. exchanges reported the
heaviest spot selling since February, and a note circulated by
Bitwise Asset Management
warned that a rotation of capital
into gold could sap crypto’s momentum. In chat rooms, the phrase “double
top” trended ominously.
Yet behind the fear-of-missing-out chatter, on-chain data told a quieter
story. Exchange reserves fell to a three-year low, according to Glassnode,
even as trading venues processed the largest single-day options volume on
record. Someone, somewhere, was buying the dip—but not shouting about it.
Enter “The Bull Theory”: A Five-Year Clock Ticks Toward 2026
The counter-narrative arrived late Tuesday when analysts at
The Bull Theory
published a thread arguing that the famous four-year Bitcoin rhythm—halving,
12–18-month melt-up, blow-off, deep winter—has quietly stretched.
According to their model, macro liquidity now flows so slowly that the cycle
resembles a five-year arc, with a top penciled in for
Q2 2026.
Liquidity: The Invisible Protagonist
The thesis hinges on a simple lag. When central banks stop tightening,
capital does not spring instantly into risk assets; it seeps. The Federal
Reserve’s anticipated end to balance-sheet contraction—signalled by Chair
Powell for the back half of 2025—could take six to twelve months to reach
crypto markets. Add in China’s surging M2 (now more than double U.S. levels)
and Japan’s freshly minted stimulus package, and the liquidity tide appears
destined to crest after the traditional post-halving window has closed.
Supporting evidence lies on the blockchain itself. Spot Bitcoin ETF
creations have continued—even on red days—and miner selling pressure has
faded since April’s halving. Retail search interest, meanwhile, sits at
barely half of its 2021 peak. In other words, the usual end-of-cycle mania
is conspicuously absent.
Stakes: A Market Caught Between Two Timelines
If the four-year script still rules, Monday’s volatility could be the first
note of the final crescendo. Traders clinging to that timetable are already
placing bets on a blow-off top before year-end and an inevitable winter
thereafter. But if the five-year rewrite is correct, this week’s swing is
merely an overture and 2025’s supposed “exit ramp” may, in hindsight, look
like mid-cycle consolidation.
For miners, treasury desks, and the growing cohort of pension funds now
conversant in seed phrases, the divergence is not academic. Capex schedules,
tax strategies, even board-level risk tolerances pivot on whether Bitcoin
exhausts itself in 12 months or 24. One energy-rich Texas mining operator
summed it up on a late-night Spaces chat: “If 2026 is the new 2025, every
rig we mothball next spring is opportunity cost.”
The market will likely vote with its wallets long before the historians do.
Until then, Bitcoin trades in the gap between two clocks—one old, one
possibly new—and each price spike or dip is a poll in real time.