Fidelity: Bitcoin's Classic Four-Year Cycle May Be Ending

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

They believe that Bitcoin's classic "boom-bust" cyclical 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 happened—its annualized realized volatility hit a historic 17th low.

This has never occurred so early after reaching an all-time high before.

In other words:
Prices remain near highs, but market behavior is calmer than ever before.

What has changed?

The key lies in the transformation of demand structure.

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

Let's look at some facts:

— There are 49 publicly listed companies, each holding more than 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 shows that the speed at which institutional capital is entering this market is 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, it would mean:

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

But there's another interesting metric worth watching.

Fidelity introduced a new indicator: the profit volatility ratio.

It measures the ratio between market profit and its volatility.

And surprisingly:

Since late 2023, this indicator has remained stable above 0.015, marking the longest stable period in Bitcoin's history.

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

What might this mean?

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

If that's true, market dynamics could shift:

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

But one thing needs to be remembered here.

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

Therefore, I tend to view these findings as a possibility—a potential scenario for the market's future direction—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 an entirely new market stage?