Bitcoin four-year cycle debate returns as price tracks gold more closely
Bitcoin reached a four-month high as its correlation with gold rose, while analysts caution that the four-year cycle is no price forecast.
By Hana Yoshida · Markets Reporter
3 min read
The Bitcoin four-year cycle is back in focus after the cryptocurrency rose to a four-month high while, according to Bitwise Europe research director André Dragosch, it began trading more like gold than a technology-linked risk asset. Fortune reported that Bitcoin touched $82,262 on Thursday before retreating about 2% to roughly $79,800 on Friday afternoon.
The rebound followed months of trading between $60,000 and $70,000 from early June, Fortune said. It also leaves investors weighing two separate ideas: a recent rise in Bitcoin’s correlation with gold, and a historical pattern that some analysts believe could point to more downside later in 2026.
What is Bitcoin’s four-year cycle?
Fidelity says Bitcoin’s major bull-market peaks and bear-market lows have historically appeared about four years apart. Its examples include peak prices of $1,150 in November 2013, $19,800 in December 2017 and $69,000 in November 2021, alongside lows of $152 in January 2015, $3,200 in December 2018 and $15,500 in November 2022.
Fidelity identified Bitcoin’s Oct. 6, 2025 high, just above $126,200, as broadly consistent with that top-to-top timing. As of February, its recent low stood 52% below that high, Fidelity said, though it stressed that prior bear-market declines of at least 77% do not create a required definition for a new bear market.
The theory is associated in part with Bitcoin halvings, programmed events that reduce rewards paid to miners by half about every four years. Fidelity says halvings, monetary policy and investor psychology may all help explain the historical pattern, while acknowledging that the precise causes of crypto price moves cannot be known.
Does moving with gold make Bitcoin a safe haven?
It does not establish that conclusion. Fortune reported that Bitcoin’s 90-day correlation with gold had approached a six-year high, citing a client note by Dragosch. Correlation measures how assets move relative to one another; it does not prove that one caused the other’s move or that they share the same risk characteristics.
Dragosch wrote that investors had recently treated Bitcoin more as a store of value than as a risky technology stock amid concerns over currency debasement. Fortune said he linked that view to bond-market uncertainty and a Treasury bond-buyback proposal that had not yet been put into effect. Earlier this year, Bitcoin had moved more closely with technology stocks, according to the report.
How much further could Bitcoin fall?
Galaxy’s head of firmwide research, Alex Thorn, wrote in June that historical comparisons suggested a $40,000 to $46,000 bottom sometime between then and the fourth quarter of 2026. Fortune reported that Thorn explicitly described the range as a base-case scenario, not a price prediction.
Fidelity urges caution against using the cycle as a stand-alone trading plan. The intervals are not exact and the historical record is limited, it said. Institutional, corporate and government participation, crypto-friendly U.S. regulation and spot crypto exchange-traded products may also be changing market behavior. Past performance does not guarantee future results, Fidelity said.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.