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 occurred—its annual realized volatility hit the 17th historical low.

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

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

What has changed?

The key point lies in the change in demand structure.

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

Here are some 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
— In 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.

In 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 approximately $225,000

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

Fidelity introduced a new metric: the profit volatility ratio.

It measures the ratio between market profits and their volatility.

And surprisingly:

Since the end of 2023, this indicator has remained stable above 0.015, which is Bitcoin's longest continuous stable period in history.

Even when prices dipped 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" stage to the "macro asset" stage.

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

— No more 80% drawdowns
— No more extreme euphoric peaks
— More of slow and steady growth

But there's one thing to remember here.

Market evolution is rarely linear.
Usually, they break most people's expectations first, then form new structures.

Therefore, I tend to view this research as a possibility, a potential scenario for market 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 stage?

If you're interested, I could do a deeper analysis on what this means for the next bear market and our investment strategy. Please give it a like for feedback.