The four-year crypto cycle 📈
Bitcoin halves roughly every four years, and crypto has moved in rough four-year waves ever since. Overlay one coin's cycles — each indexed to $1 on its halving day — to see whether this cycle is tracking above or below the last ones, or compare coins within a single cycle. Log scale, updated daily.
returnsview.com
Each line is one BTC halving cycle, indexed to $1 on halving day (x = 0). Dashed = completed cycles; solid = the cycle in progress. Monthly closes, log scale.
Each cycle's multiple shrinks. Bitcoin returned 88× in the 2012 cycle, 22× in 2016, 8× in 2020 — the law of large numbers at work as the asset matures. Overlaying them from the halving makes the fade obvious, and shows the 2024 cycle so far running below the 2020 pace.
The altcoins rhyme, louder. Every cycle nearly everything peaks in one window and bottoms together the year after — and the smaller the coin, the wilder the swing: XRP 342× in 2016, Solana 405× in 2020, both followed by 80–95% drawdowns.
Cycles are dated by Bitcoin halvings (Nov 2012, Jul 2016, May 2020, Apr 2024). Monthly closes; intra-month highs ran higher. A coin only joins a cycle if its history begins at that halving. Not financial advice — past cycles don't predict the next.