Fidelity: Bitcoin's Classic Four-Year Cycle May Be Coming to an End

Investors, Fidelity Digital Assets recently released an interesting research report.

They believe that Bitcoin's classic "boom-bust" cycle pattern may be becoming a thing of the past.

And the evidence is quite compelling.

At its October 2025 peak, Bitcoin's market cap reached approximately $2.5 trillion.
However, in January 2026, something unusual happened — its annualized realized volatility hit a 17-time historical low.

This had never occurred so early after reaching a new all-time high before.

In other words:
Price remains near elevated levels, but market behavior is calmer than ever before.

What has changed?

The key point is that the demand structure has changed.

Today, nearly 12% of the total Bitcoin supply is held by publicly listed companies and ETFs.
Moreover, most of these purchases occurred after 2023.

Let's look at some facts:

— 49 public companies each hold more than 1,000 Bitcoin
— The largest Bitcoin ETF reached $75 billion in assets under management in less than 2 years
— In comparison, the gold ETF GLD took nearly 7 years to reach the same scale

This shows that institutional capital is entering this market faster than any emerging asset class in history.

Now, let's look at on-chain data.

In this cycle, the market cap to realized market cap ratio indicator has basically maintained approximately 2x the realized market cap level.

In comparison:

2013 — approximately 6x
2017 — approximately 4x
2021 — approximately 4x

If this cycle's MVRV reaches at least 4x, that would mean:

— Market cap reaches approximately $4.5 trillion
— Bitcoin price approximately $225,000

But there's another interesting indicator worth watching.

Fidelity introduced a new metric: the profit volatility ratio.

It measures the ratio between market profits and their volatility.

And surprisingly:

Since the end of 2023, this indicator has remained stable above 0.015, the longest sustained stable period in Bitcoin's history.

Even when the price dropped below $70,000 in February 2026, it failed to break this structure.

What might this mean?

Perhaps we are witnessing Bitcoin's transition from a "speculative asset" phase to a "macro asset" phase.

If that's the case, the market landscape could change:

— No more 80% crashes
— No more extreme euphoric peaks
— More slow and steady growth

But there's one thing to remember here.

Market evolution is rarely linear.
Usually, markets break most people's expectations first, then form new structures.

Therefore, I tend to view this research as a possibility, a potential scenario for where the market might go, rather than a definitive prediction.

So, fellow investors, what do you think?

Is Bitcoin still following the old four-year cycle pattern,
or are we gradually entering a brand new market stage?

If you're interested, I can dive deeper into what this means for the next bear market and our investment strategy. Please give it a thumbs up for feedback.