According to Anthony Scaramucci, managing partner of the investment firm SkyBridge, the current bear market in Bitcoin (BTC) can be explained by the four-year cycle and long-term selling of BTC holders at the psychological level of $100,000.
Scaramucci said Bitcoin’s four-year market cycle has been “muted” by institutional investors and BTC exchange-traded fund (ETF) inflows, which have tempered volatility, but changed market dynamics have not completely erased conventional BTC cycles. He said:
“We’re on a four-year cycle and there were some traditional whales, some OGs that believed in a four-year cycle, and guess what happens in life when you believe in something? You create a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
BTC will continue to see volatile price movements for most of the year until the fourth quarter of 2026, when prices will begin to rise again in a up-to-date bull market cycle, he said.
Scaramucci said market participants, including himself, widely expected BTC to rise to $150,000 in 2025, driven by U.S. President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto agenda and U.S. regulators warming up to the digital asset industry.
However, the October market crash, which took BTC from an all-time high of around $126,000 to a low of $60,000, completely shattered the widely held consensus.
Markets often move in opposition to prevailing investor sentiment, Scaramucci said, citing Bitcoin’s price action in early 2023 following the November 2022 collapse of FTX as an example.
“It was a period of great disinterest and great apathy, the bull market has started again,” he said, adding that the current BTC bear market is a “garden variety” correction consistent with previous declines.
To be sure, cryptocurrency industry executives, analysts and market participants are still debating whether Bitcoin’s four-year cycle theory still holds true after BTC ended 2025 in the red, or whether changing market dynamics have permanently changed the way BTC’s price moves.
Related: Bitcoin price is expected to remain at 70,000. dollars in the face of growing concerns about inflation
Could the Iran war and geopolitical turmoil bring more pain to BTC?
The price of BTC fell below $69,000 on Saturday as the Iran war entered its third week, shaking up all risky assets.
Stock investors saw the S&P 500 index continue to decline on Friday, down about 1.3%. Day before the indicator closed below the 200-day moving average – a key technical indicator that has been closely watched to gauge the overall trend in stock markets – for the first time in 10 months.
Some analysts are currently forecasting a potential 50% price decline for BTC in 2026 if it continues to show a positive correlation with the S&P 500 Index.
Warehouse: The Bitcoin four-year cycle debate is over: Benjamin Cowen
