Headline: Bitcoin’s four-year rhythm remains — but politics and liquidity are calling the tune
Markus Thielen, head of research at 10x Research, told The Wolf Of All Streets podcast that Bitcoin’s familiar four-year cycle hasn’t disappeared — but what drives that cadence has shifted. Instead of the halvings dictating market peaks, Thielen says election timing, central bank policy and broader liquidity conditions now exert far more influence on price action.
Thielen pointed out that Bitcoin’s big tops in 2013, 2017 and 2021 all arrived in Q4, and argued those turning points line up better with political uncertainty and election cycles than with the calendar of halvings. He warned markets are increasingly sensitive to whether the sitting president’s party will retain control of Congress — a dynamic he suggested will shape policy expectations and investor positioning (he referenced current odds surrounding President Donald Trump). In short: changes to expectations — driven by politics — move prices.
That shift matters because institutional players now have a much larger footprint in crypto. The recent Fed rate cut failed to ignite the broad risk-on rally traders might have expected, and Thielen says institutional desks remain cautious amid mixed policy signals and tighter liquidity. Net capital flows into Bitcoin have cooled versus last year, removing one of the key forces that helped fuel earlier rallies.
Arthur Hayes, BitMEX’s co-founder, made a similar point in October: global liquidity, not an automatic four-year clock, has been the dominant mover of crypto markets. Halvings can coincide with rallies, Hayes noted, but often that alignment is coincidental rather than causal.
Market action this week underscored those themes: Bitcoin dipped below $90,000 in thin Sunday trading — a sign of fragile demand when volumes are light — while Ether showed relative strength and many large-cap altcoins lagged. Traders are positioning ahead of a busy slate of U.S. economic data and central-bank events, placing a premium on signals that affect liquidity and risk appetite. With institutional desks watching macro reads closely, momentum is likely to hinge on flows rather than calendar dates.
The takeaway: the four-year pattern can still help frame expectations, but it’s no longer a hard-and-fast rule. Halvings remain relevant to supply and miner economics, yet in a market shaped by large funds and ETFs, the primary fuel is cash and credit conditions. When liquidity loosens, prices can surge; when it tightens, rallies stall — a lesson central to both Thielen’s and Hayes’s views.
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