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" 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 happened—its annualized realized volatility hit a 17th historical low point.

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

In other words:
Price remains near elevated levels, but market behavior is calmer than ever before.

What has changed?

The key lies in the shift in demand structure.

Today, nearly 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:

— 49 public companies each hold more than 1,000 Bitcoin
— The largest Bitcoin ETF reached $75 billion in assets under management in less than 2 years
— By comparison, gold ETF GLD took nearly 7 years to reach the same scale

This shows 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 indicator 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 reaches approximately $4.5 trillion
— Bitcoin price reaches approximately $225,000

But there's another interesting indicator worth watching.

Fidelity introduced a new metric: the profit volatility ratio.

It measures the ratio between market profits and their 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 price dropped below $70,000 in February 2026, it failed to break this structure.

What might this mean?

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

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

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

But one thing needs to be remembered here.

Market evolution is rarely linear.
Usually, markets break most people's expectations first, then form 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, investors, what do you think?

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