Bitcoin Cycle vs Liquidity: how the essay works

It is a visual essay with a chart that builds as you scroll. The question is simple: Bitcoin has topped roughly every four years, around the halving, but is that the real driver, or does price follow the economy and the amount of money in the system?

The essay goes through seven scenes. It starts with the Macro Pulse, adds Bitcoin on top, shows how regularly the cycle tops have arrived, and then tests the theory on two awkward years, 2014 and 2026. Below the story you find four objections to the argument, how each side would be proven right, and a short question and answer list.

It takes a side in the way an essay does, but it prints the counter-arguments next to it. Treat it as a way to think about the market, not as an answer.

The main line is the Macro Pulse. It is built so that 50 means average factory demand since June 2004. Higher means demand is stronger than usual, lower means weaker. The Bitcoin line is drawn on top on a log scale, so equal percentage moves look equal. That chart line is built from indicative quarterly points, so exact values differ slightly from daily prices.

Under the chart, a block of live figures shows where things stand now, such as the latest Pulse reading, the Philadelphia Fed survey and Bitcoin's change over the past twelve months. If a figure cannot be loaded, it is hidden instead of shown stale.

The Macro Pulse is our own measure. It uses the new-orders question from three regional Federal Reserve manufacturing surveys, published for free on FRED: Philadelphia, New York (Empire State) and Dallas (Texas). Each survey is compared with its own history since June 2004, the three are averaged, and the result is put on the 50-centred scale. A month needs at least two of the three surveys to get a value. We use these instead of the better-known ISM survey because ISM does not allow its data to be republished in charts.

The cycle counts use Bitcoin's daily closing prices. From the January 2015 low to the December 2017 top is 1,067 days. From the December 2018 low to the November 2021 top is 1,059 days. From the November 2022 low to the October 2025 top is 1,050 days. All three sit inside a 17-day band, which is the pattern the essay holds up.

Other live figures on the page include Bitcoin's price, MVRV, the cost to mine a coin, a hash-rate signal, Bitcoin dominance and the ETH/BTC ratio. The Pulse data is monthly and cached for up to 12 hours, and the page itself refreshes about every hour, so a new reading shows up soon after the Fed banks publish. If the newest Pulse reading is more than 3 months old, the page refuses to show it as current.

Most of the page updates itself, but the scenario at the end is a judgement, written on a set date under certain market conditions. A judgement cannot refresh itself, so the page checks its own premises on every load.

The scenario is marked expired and greyed out when Bitcoin trades outside the $40k to $100k band it was written for, when the Pulse slips out of roughly the top quarter of its own history, when the call is more than 120 days old, or when live data is missing so the check cannot run. The reasons are shown on the page. When it happens, read the scenario as a record of an earlier opinion, not a current view.

This is also why the essay avoids hardcoded timing claims. For example, how long the Pulse usually takes to peak after crossing above 50 is calculated from every completed upswing since 2004, and the page shows the median, range and number of runs. That is context for a scenario, and the essay says plainly that neither outcome is a prediction.

A neat story is easy to over-trust. These are the main reasons to keep some distance.

A made-up example. You scroll to the 2014 scene and see the Pulse rising while Bitcoin fell hard. That tells you factory demand alone did not steer price that year. You then check the 2026 scene to see whether the same gap shows up again, and read the objections to see where the argument is weakest.

You come away with a clearer question to ask, not a trade. For a live, daily version that overlays today on earlier cycles, open the Bitcoin Cycle Chart. For a sentiment view alongside it, see the Fear & Greed Index.

Everything on this page is free to read for everyone. You do not need an account, and no part of the essay, the live figures or the FAQ is locked behind Premium. The page links to the free Bitcoin Cycle Chart for the live version of the question.

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