Bitcoin Stalls Above $100K — The Old Cycle Might Be Dead

Bitcoin’s momentum has faded as it hovers above $100,000, caught in its tightest trading range in over a year. Analysts are eyeing the 200-week moving average — a sacred line in crypto’s long-term charts — for clues. But with Wall Street now running the game, the old four-year cycle might finally be obsolete.

⚡ Quick Hits

• 💵 Price zone: BTC consolidating above $100,000
• 📉 Key level: 200-week SMA around $54,750 — historical macro support
• 🏦 Market shift: Institutional capital now dominates volume
• 🧭 Cycle theory: Classic four-year halving rhythm losing predictive power

📊 The Plateau Above Six Figures

Bitcoin’s explosive run from March to June has flatlined. Since crossing the six-figure threshold, BTC has been stuck in a tight sideways grind, testing traders’ patience and fracturing faith in the “four-year cycle” narrative.

The four-year cycle theory, born from Bitcoin’s programmed halving events, suggests that each bull market peaks roughly a year after halving — followed by a corrective phase. But 2025’s market isn’t obeying those rules.

🧮 The 200-Week Lifeline

For long-term investors, the 200-week simple moving average (SMA) remains gospel. Currently sitting near $54,750, it has historically marked the bottom of bear markets — and the start of fresh macro uptrends.

In both 2017 and 2021, Bitcoin’s price corrected back toward this line before rebounding into a new structural phase. Today, BTC sits nearly double that level, showing long-term resilience — yet signaling that the old rhythm between halvings and recoveries might be breaking.

“We’re in uncharted territory — the 200-week line is still valid, but it no longer defines the tempo,” said one crypto strategist.

🏛️ From Retail Frenzy to Institutional Rhythm

Bitcoin’s price behavior has evolved. Where once retail traders and social sentiment drove parabolic rallies, the 2025 landscape is dominated by ETFs, hedge funds, and algorithmic desks.

That institutional layer brings:

• Deeper liquidity (less wild volatility)
• Longer accumulation phases
• Data-driven trading instead of narrative hype

This shift may be extending the market’s natural breathing cycle — stretching it from a tidy four-year rhythm into a slower, more mature expansion curve.

⚖️ The Split in the Charts

Analysts are now divided between two schools of thought:

*� The New Stability Camp: BTC is maturing into a “digital macro asset” like gold — slower growth, reduced volatility, but deeper institutional integration.

*� The Eternal Cycle Camp: Human nature — greed, leverage, FOMO — doesn’t change. The market will still overheat and reset, just with bigger players and bigger swings.

Both agree on one point: Bitcoin’s consolidation above $100K is not weakness — it’s a recalibration of a trillion-dollar asset finding equilibrium in a more complex, institutional world.

🧭 The Bigger Picture

If Bitcoin’s old four-year rhythm is dead, we may be entering an era of asynchronous cycles — driven less by halvings and more by macro liquidity, ETF flows, and global capital rotation.

The 200-week SMA remains a compass — but the map has changed. Bitcoin’s path forward will depend less on past patterns and more on who’s holding the wheel.

TL;DR

• 💰 Bitcoin consolidates above $100K, losing short-term momentum
• 📊 The 200-week SMA (~$54.7K) remains the long-term compass
• 🏦 Institutional dominance disrupts the classic four-year cycle
• ⚖️ Analysts split: stability vs. speculation
• 🚀 Bitcoin’s evolution from speculative asset to macro instrument is underway