The most common question I’ve been asked in meetings with institutional investors over the last few weeks is whether the four-year cycle is still relevant.
The four-year cycle refers to bitcoin’s historical pattern of trading up for three years and crashing in the fourth.
The question matters because, according to the four-year cycle, next year should be bad—both for bitcoin and for crypto more generally.
While I can’t say for certain whether crypto’s prices will go up or down next year, I think blindly assuming the four-year cycle will repeat is foolish. After all, the four-year cycle is not a law handed down by the crypto gods on a stone tablet. Rather, bitcoin’s historical four-year cycle has been driven by very specific forces:
The Bitcoin Halving: Every four years, the amount of bitcoin produced by the blockchain is cut in half.
Interest Rates: Interest rates spiked in 2018 and 2022, contributing to crypto’s pullback in those years.
Boom and Bust: Crypto’s bust years (2014, 2018, and 2022) followed years of very strong returns (for instance, bitcoin rose 5530% in 2013, 1349% in 2017, and 57% in 2021). Fraud and froth tend to build up in ebullient markets. The popping of those bubbles—for instance, the clampdown on initial coin offerings (ICOs) in 2018 and the downfall of FTX in 2022—contributed to pullbacks in those years.
Today, these three forces are either much weaker or moving in opposite directions from past cycles. The bitcoin halving is by definition half as important as it was four years ago; interest rates are likely moving down in 2026, not up; and crypto didn’t boom in 2025.
At the same time, much bigger forces—particularly institutional adoption and regulatory progress—are gaining momentum in 2026. In our recently published 2026 prediction we forecasted that bitcoin would reach new all-time highs next year. I continue to think that’s the most likely outcome.
If I’m right that the four-year cycle is dead, it’s fair to ask: What’s the right mental model for crypto in 2026 and beyond?
It matters because the four-year cycle was a helpful construct for investors. Knowing we were either in a recovery period, a bull market, or a crypto winter helped investors hold fast during bear markets and stay grounded during the good times.
What replaces that mental model today?
The ten-year grind.
I know, I know. It’s not the sexiest moniker in the world. But hear me out, because I think it’s right.
The grind consists of powerful, persistent, slow-moving positive forces colliding with periodic, violent, fast-moving—but ultimately weaker—negative forces.
The positive forces gathering steam today include institutional adoption, regulatory advances, concerns over fiat debasement, and the emergence of real-world use cases like stablecoins and tokenization.
Because these trends disrupt deeply entrenched systems like capital markets, global payments, and international monetary regimes, they will likely take 10+ years to play out in full. You can see evidence of their early progress in the billions of dollars flowing into crypto ETPs, in the slow but steady march of crypto legislation through Congress, in the rapid growth of the stablecoin and tokenization markets, and other factors.
But a grind involves resistance. The negative forces that could stand in opposition include macro shocks, leverage washouts, and hacks, scams, or rug pulls. These trends tend to play out over weeks, months, and quarters.
Generally speaking, the positive forces are more powerful than the negative forces, but the negative forces move quickly and can overwhelm the positive forces for periods of time. That’s what happened, for instance, on October 10, 2025, when a macro shock triggered a massive liquidation of leveraged crypto positions that sent markets into a sharp pullback.
The grind is why crypto is so divided at the moment, with retail investors near peak despair at the same time that many institutional investors are at max bullishness. It’s because they're looking at different timelines. Retail is worried about the fallout of the October liquidation event; institutions are imagining a world with $3 trillion in stablecoin assets in 2030.
They are both reasonable views, just on different time scales.
For a few months now, I’ve been using “The Grind” as a framing to evaluate the market, and it’s proven very helpful for me. The Grind suggests we’ll see:
Strong but not spectacular returns over time
Lower overall volatility
Periodic 20–40% drawdowns
It means you have to take pullbacks seriously; they can persist for long periods of time. But as long as the fundamentals remain strong, you can have confidence that prices will recover.
In retrospect, I think we entered The Grind in January 2024 when spot bitcoin ETFs launched. The milestone moment kicked off a trend of institutional investment that I suspect will take a decade to play out. And sure enough, since the ETFs launched, bitcoin is up 93% even as it’s experienced three 20%+ corrections.
I think that’s the kind of return profile we’re going to live with for a while. The grind might not be as wild and eye-popping as the historical boom-and-bust cycle, but it points to something deeper going on in crypto these days. The grind is what happens when an asset class grows up.
Best wishes to everyone for a great holiday season. I’ll see you in 2026.
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