If you want to know why the four-year Bitcoin (BTC USD) cycle is dead, you don’t need a price chart.
Just a lesson in real-world monetary power with former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes, making Bitcoin news recently. Scarcity isn’t adjudicated by some fixed protocol or block schedule.
It’s money, and it’s markets. Or more precisely: it’s the price and supply of money.
Every government, across every era, he argues, has tried to bend those twin levers to engineer prosperity or stave off instability.
Every time, the solution boils down to the same playbook: print more, then pray for a scientific miracle that finally breaks the chains of scarcity.
The Devil’s Construct: Money, Why Bitcoin is Best
We’re not living in a sci-fi utopia. Energy is not infinite, and neither are resources.
So we use this devilish construct called money to allocate what’s left. In a perfect world, a free market would always get the job done.
But as Hayes points out, we don’t live in a perfect world, and we don’t have a free market.
Governments are designed to dampen volatility, provide public goods, and avoid immoral market outcomes.
They control money’s price and quantity, for better and for worse.
Sometimes, money creation is benevolent. Other times, it’s despotic. But one thing is constant: over time, every government debases its currency in the hope of short-cutting scarcity itself.
Printing is the palliative cure for volatility, uncertainty, and political discomfort. As Hayes aptly puts it:
“A politician can’t wait decades or centuries to achieve a scientific revolution. And thus, the people’s palliative cure for a volatile and uncertain universe is always to print more money.”
Rituals and Resistance
The people find ways to hold onto their sovereignty, even in the face of currency debasement. Across cultures scarred by inflation, hard-money gifting rituals secured wealth and social capital.
Politicians know better than to meddle (at least, if they want to keep their heads attached). Today, Hayes reminds us, the landscape is digital.
The internet and “thinking machines” empower governments more than ever, so the battle for sound money goes online.
Enter Bitcoin, the technological miracle dropped by Satoshi at exactly the right moment in history.
The Bitcoin (BTC USD) Cycle in the Age of Fiat
Bitcoin is the best money ever created, Hayes argues, but its dance with the dollar remains center stage.
Each price cycle has coincided with swings in the price and supply of dollars (and, by proxy, yuan).
The upshot? Traders who cling to the four-year halving pattern forget that those rallies and crashes happened for reasons deeper than any code-level supply cut.
The real driver is liquidity. And the only thing that can kill a Bitcoin (BTC USD) bull market is a turn in global monetary currents. Hayes lays out the proof with four cycles:
Genesis Cycle (2009–2013)
As the world reeled from the GFC, Ben Bernanke let the Fed run wild with QE, and China pumped credit into infrastructure.
Dollar supply rocketed, interest rates hit zero, and Bitcoin (BTC USD) flourished. When the Fed and PBOC wobbled and credit growth stalled, the Bitcoin bubble burst.
ICO Cycle (2013–2017)
This bull run wasn’t about the dollar but about the yuan. Ethereum launched, unlocking a frenzy of new issues, all fueled by China’s credit binge.
Tightening followed, and the bull market faded. Once again, it was global liquidity that pulled the rug.
COVID Cycle (2017–2021)
COVID policy turned Trump and Biden into central bankers with a printing press. From helicopter money to asset pumps, the supply of dollars doubled, rates collapsed, and every market soared.
China, meanwhile, used COVID to fight its own property bubble, focusing less on monetary expansion.
The party ended not with a halving, but when inflation spiked, stimulus halted, and the Fed started tightening.
New World Order (2021–?)
Now, the money games play out through the Fed’s Reverse Repo Program and a fresh surge in Treasury bill issuance.
With the RRP drained and interest rates cut even as inflation stays hot, it’s liquidity that’s back in charge.
China’s impulses matter, but Xi’s not in a rush to pump credit like 2009 or 2015. The future, Hayes argues will be “lower, not higher, interest rates and higher, not lower, growth in the money supply.”
The King Is Dead, Long Live the King
Listen to the power players in Washington and Beijing, Hayes says. Money is getting cheaper. Liquidity is getting more plentiful.
As noted in recent Bitcoin news, the crypto rises in anticipation of this next chapter, not because its code dictates a cycle, but because global currency masters have chosen the path of debasement once more.
This is the guiding light for traders in 2025: the four-year cycle is a relic. As Arthur Hayes concludes:
“The king is dead. Long live the king.”