Analyst Miles Deutscher proclaims the end of crypto’s 4-year cycle, a phenomenon often associated with Bitcoin’s halving events and subsequent bull runs. “The 4-year cycle is dead,” Deutscher wrote in a thread on X, underscoring his belief that the crypto market of 2025 and beyond will behave very differently from the more predictable up-and-down patterns of the past.
Deutscher contends that multiple fundamental shifts—ranging from waning supply-side triggers to unprecedented institutional demand—have irrevocably transformed the market’s landscape. He explains that any investor still relying on the notion of waiting for a singular “alt season” may find themselves lagging behind in this new era. “We’re entering a new paradigm for crypto,” Deutscher says. “Either adapt or die.”
Why The 4-Year Crypto Cycle Is Dead
The analyst’s argument begins with Bitcoin’s halving. Historically, each halving substantially cut the daily BTC issuance, often driving up the price through a supply shock effect. Deutscher acknowledges that this was undeniably potent in 2012 and 2016, when the issuance reduction was substantially more significant in percentage terms.
However, he believes its impact has diminished sharply in subsequent years. “Over time, the relative impact of the halvings diminish, as the reduction in issuance gets continuously slashed in half,” Deutscher observes, noting that the 2024 halving will carry only a 6.25% reduction in new BTC supply. Compared to the early halving events, which cut issuance by as much as 50% or 25%, he believes the forthcoming reduction pales in comparison, thereby eroding one of the primary catalysts behind the 4-year crypto cycle narrative.
He then pivots to what he sees as a monumental change on the demand side: the rise of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US. Deutscher highlights them as “the most successful ETF launches in HISTORY” and argues that this wave of institutional demand has done more than simply absorb newly minted BTC.
It has also reshaped the way liquidity flows through the crypto ecosystem. “Demand has exceeded everyone’s expectations,” he says, pointing out that most of the new capital entering Bitcoin through ETFs remains in Bitcoin, rather than rotating into smaller altcoins. This dynamic, in his view, dismantles a longstanding assumption that a bull run in BTC eventually trickles down to the broader altcoin market.
The concept of an “alt season”—the phase in previous crypto cycles where profits from Bitcoin were recycled into smaller-cap tokens—is, according to Deutscher, on shaky ground in 2025. He ascribes this not just to the ETF-driven wealth effect staying in BTC, but also to a major behavioral shift among retail investors. “Retail have skipped phases 2 (ETH) and 3 (majors) altogether, and are instead opting to play on-chain casino games,” he writes, referencing Pump.Fun, a platform on the Solana blockchain designed for creating and trading memecoins.
In essence, many individual traders are bypassing the once-common step of slowly progressing from Bitcoin to Ethereum to other major tokens, and are instead plunging headfirst into highly speculative on-chain projects—often low-cap meme coins or so-called “casino” plays. This new pattern has siphoned capital away from the mid- and large-cap altcoins that once dominated speculative inflows.
Deutscher delves into the consequences of these shifting tides, noting that while early participants in these on-chain tokens sometimes see enormous gains, later arrivals can face severe losses when these illiquid assets collapse. “Unlike 2022, where losses were limited mostly to CEX alts with solid liquidity, now people are getting stuck in illiquid on-chain memes that quickly retraced 70-80%,” he says. The resulting “wealth destruction event” is creating negative sentiment across the board, even though Bitcoin and some major cryptocurrencies continue to trend upward in a broader sense.
Regulatory headwinds, particularly from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, have played a part in catalyzing these shifts, according to Deutscher. He suggests that overbearing regulations have made it “impossible to fair-launch projects,” prompting developers and communities to innovate new on-chain methods of fundraising or distribution—methods that sometimes resemble gambling more than traditional investment vehicles.
“Since 2017, we haven’t found a reasonable system to make the space more equitable in terms of the way projects launch (airdrops being the outlier and probably the best model i.e. HYPE and JUP). But maybe that will change under Trump,” he remarks, leaving open the question of how potential political changes could shape the next chapter of crypto’s regulatory evolution.
Despite painting a picture of a rapidly shifting market, Deutscher insists the end of the 4-year crypto cycle does not equate to the demise of opportunity. He does caution that investors can no longer rely on “lazy money,” a term he uses to describe the relatively simple strategy of buying a basket of alts and waiting for a predictable bull run. Instead, Deutscher foresees a series of shorter, more frequent “mini echo-bubbles” tied to macroeconomic factors rather than Bitcoin-specific events. He points out that 2024 saw distinct themes—memes in November, AI in December, agents in January—and expects many more short-lived yet lucrative trends to pop up in the future.
He also suggests that a potential advantage of this new environment could be the absence of drawn-out, crypto-specific bear markets, although he acknowledges that macroeconomic downturns can still depress the entire market for extended periods. He remains optimistic, however, believing that savvy traders who actively look for emerging narratives and manage their risk can continue to see gains.
In his own approach to navigating these uncharted waters, Deutscher splits his portfolio into two main segments. He keeps half in long-term, high-conviction investments, presumably consisting of assets he believes can survive and thrive regardless of market hype. The other half remains in stablecoins, serving as a reservoir from which he enters and exits shorter-term trades. By measuring his returns in stablecoins, he can “take profits back into stables every time I exit a trade” and maintain a clear sense of his performance over time.
Though he admits this strategy requires more diligence than simply holding altcoins through thick and thin, Deutscher argues that carefully placed smaller bets, compounded consistently, can ultimately lead to larger gains. “Everyone is so focused on an end goal—whether it be 5x or 10x or 20x—when it’s actually better to adopt a mindset where you simply focus on making multiple smaller bets versus one big hail mary,” he explains.
At press time, Bitcoin traded at $97,834.
