Is Bitcoin's Four-Year Cycle Broken? Benjamin Cowen Offers Key Insights

The debate over whether Bitcoin's four-year cycle has become obsolete intensified in 2025, but Benjamin Cowen, founder of Into The Cryptoverse, believes this argument is meaningless. He points out that Bitcoin has historically peaked in the fourth quarter, a pattern that has never changed. Market participants, however, overinterpret structural changes, trying to prove that 'this time is different,' but in reality, it has not deviated from its historical trajectory.

Cowen predicts that 2026 will be a typical bear market year. Despite the market's buzz about institutional money entering, the promotion of Bitcoin ETFs, and the impact of macro policies, he emphasizes that price movements still follow the previous rhythm. After Bitcoin reached a historical high of $126,000 in October 2025, it immediately entered a correction phase, falling to a low of $60,000 before recently recovering to above $70,000. He believes that this round of the bear market is likely to last from October 2025 to October 2026, which is highly consistent with the duration of the previous two bear markets.

It is worth noting that Cowen is not an ordinary crypto analyst. Before entering the crypto field, he studied aerospace engineering and interned at NASA, and later switched to mathematics and physics, with a solid quantitative analysis background. This academic training makes his observation of cycle patterns more systematic and in-depth. Different from previous cycles, there has been no obvious altcoin rotation phenomenon after this round of highs. Cowen pointed out that this is highly similar to the top characteristics of 2019: the market is not driven by狂热emotions, but by general indifference. When the bull markets of 2017 and 2021 peaked, market sentiment was high, and a large amount of funds poured into high-risk altcoins; while the peak in October 2025 was reached under low mainstream attention, which made the funds lack the motivation to transfer to alternative assets. He further analyzed that this phenomenon is in line with the Federal Reserve's macro policy rhythm. When Bitcoin peaked in 2019, it coincided with the two months before the end of quantitative tightening; and the high point in October 2025 also appeared at a similar time before the end of the Fed's tightening policy. This high degree of synchronization between macro and market behavior reinforces the credibility of cyclical patterns.

Cowen's conclusion is clear: Bitcoin's four-year cycle is not dead, it is just being replayed in different emotional contexts. The essence of the market has not changed, what has changed is the way people look at it. When emotions change from狂热to calm, the shape of the cycle will also be adjusted accordingly, but its core rhythm remains stable. For investors, understanding this linkage between emotions and macro is far more important than chasing the narrative of 'this time is different'.