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.

Moreover, the evidence is quite compelling.

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

This has never happened at such an early stage following an all-time high.

In other words:
Price remains near its highs, but the market's performance is calmer than ever before.

What has changed?

The key lies in the shift in demand structure.

Today, approximately 12% of Bitcoin's total supply is held by publicly traded companies and ETFs.
Moreover, most of these purchases occurred after 2023.

Consider these facts:

— There are 49 publicly traded companies, each holding over 1,000 Bitcoin
— The largest Bitcoin ETF reached $75 billion in assets under management in less than 2 years
— By comparison, the gold ETF GLD took nearly 7 years to reach the same scale

This indicates 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 value to realized value ratio has remained at approximately 2x the realized value level.

By comparison:

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

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

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

But there's another interesting metric worth paying attention to.

Fidelity introduced a new metric: the profit volatility ratio.

It measures the ratio between market profit and its volatility.

And surprisingly:

Since late 2023, this metric 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 could this possibly mean?

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

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

— No more 80% sharp declines
— No more extreme euphoric peaks
— More gradual and stable growth instead

But here's one thing to remember.

Market evolution is rarely linear.
Typically, markets first break most people's expectations before establishing new structures.

Therefore, I tend to view these findings as a possibility—a potential scenario for Bitcoin's future direction—rather than a definitive prediction.

So, investors, what do you think?

Is Bitcoin still following the old four-year cycle pattern,
or are we gradually entering an entirely new market phase?