The four-year cycle is broken—how to invest in cryptocurrency under the new normal?
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The four-year cycle is broken—how to invest in cryptocurrency under the new normal?
Adapting to the new normal of "parallel multi-play cycles" may be the key to truly profiting in this bull market.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy: Haotian
Just got off a call with several industry leaders, and everyone is talking about the same thing...
The "four-year cycle" theory is completely outdated!
If you're still holding on for overnight riches, still dreaming of "10x or 100x gains during bull markets," you may have already been left behind by the market. Why?
Because smart money has already uncovered a secret: today's crypto no longer follows one single playbook, but rather four entirely different gameplay cycles running simultaneously 🧵:
Each gameplay cycle has its own rhythm, strategies, and profit logic.
Bitcoin Super Cycle: Retail exits, a decade-long slow bull may be set in stone
The traditional halving cycle "script"? Totally broken! BTC has evolved from a "speculative asset" into an "institutional allocation asset." The scale and investment logic of Wall Street, public companies, and ETFs are completely different from retail investors' simple "bull-bear switching" approach.
Where’s the key shift? Retail holders are massively selling their positions, while institutional capital—represented by MicroStrategy—is rushing in. This fundamental restructuring of ownership is redefining BTC’s price discovery mechanism and volatility profile.
What are retail investors facing? A double squeeze from "time cost" and "opportunity cost." Institutions can afford to hold for 3–5 years waiting for BTC’s long-term value to materialize, but can retail? Clearly not—they lack both the patience and financial capacity.
In my view, we may be entering a BTC super slow bull market lasting over ten years. Annualized returns could stabilize around 20–30%, with significantly reduced intraday volatility—more like a steadily growing tech stock. As for how high BTC’s price might go? From today’s retail perspective, it’s almost impossible to predict.
MEME Attention Short Wave Cycle: From playground for the masses to professional yield farm
The idea of long-term MEME growth still holds: during gaps in technical narratives, MEME stories consistently fill the market’s "boredom vacuum" by syncing with sentiment, capital flows, and attention cycles.
What is the essence of MEME? It’s a vehicle for instant gratification. No whitepaper, no technical validation, no roadmap—just a symbol that makes people smile or resonate emotionally. From cat and dog culture to political memes, from AI-themed packaging to community IP incubation, MEMEs have evolved into a complete "emotion monetization" industrial chain.
The problem is, MEME’s "short, fast, and intense" nature makes it both a barometer of market sentiment and a reservoir for capital. When liquidity is abundant, MEMEs become the first testing ground for hot money; when liquidity tightens, they turn into the last speculative safe haven.
But reality is harsh: the MEME market is evolving from "grassroots carnival" into "professional arena." For ordinary retail investors, the difficulty of profiting from such high-frequency rotations is increasing exponentially.
Legends built by P-boys sitting idle will become increasingly rare. With studios, quant teams, and large holders entering, this former "playground for the poor" will become extremely competitive.
Technical Narrative Leapfrog Long Cycle: Bottom fishing in the Trough of Disillusionment, 10x returns over three years?
Has the technical narrative disappeared? Not at all. Truly innovative technologies—like Layer2 scaling, ZK tech, AI infra—require 2–3 years or more of building before real results emerge. These projects follow the technology adoption lifecycle (Gartner Hype Cycle), not the emotional cycles of financial markets—a fundamental time mismatch.
The reason technical narratives are criticized is that projects often receive sky-high valuations during the conceptual phase, only to become undervalued later during the "Trough of Disillusionment" when actual tech deployment begins. This means value realization for tech projects comes in non-linear, leapfrog patterns.
For patient investors with strong technical judgment, positioning in genuinely valuable tech projects during the "Trough of Disillusionment" may be the best strategy for outsized returns. But the prerequisite is enduring long waiting periods, market pain, and potential ridicule.
Innovation Micro-Hype Short Cycle: 1–3 month windows brewing the next major narrative wave
Before a dominant technical narrative emerges, smaller themes rapidly rotate—from RWA to DePIN, from AI Agents to AI Infra (MCP+A2A)—each micro-hype possibly lasting only 1–3 months.
This fragmentation and rapid rotation reflect dual constraints: scarcity of market attention and efficiency of capital seeking returns.
In fact, typical micro-narratives follow a six-stage model: "Proof of Concept → Capital Testing → Media Amplification → FOMO Influx → Valuation Overextension → Capital Exit." Want to profit from this pattern?
The key is to enter during "Proof of Concept" to "Capital Testing," and exit at the peak of "FOMO Influx."
The competition among micro-narratives is essentially a zero-sum game for attention. Yet these narratives often share technical linkages and conceptual progression. For example, MCP (Model Context Protocol) and A2A (Agent-to-Agent) standards in AI Infra represent foundational upgrades to the AI Agent narrative. If subsequent narratives build upon previous ones, creating systematic synergy and forming sustainable value loops during integration, a major breakout narrative—akin to DeFi Summer—could emerge.
Looking at current micro-trends, breakthroughs in AI infrastructure appear most likely. If core technologies like MCP protocols, A2A communication standards, distributed compute, inference, and data networks can be integrated coherently, they truly have the potential to form a super-narrative comparable to an "AI Summer."
That's all.
Overall, understanding the true nature of these four parallel gameplay cycles is essential to finding the right strategy within each rhythm. Undoubtedly, the simplistic "four-year cycle" mindset can no longer keep up with today’s market complexity.
Adapting to the new normal of "multiple gameplay cycles running in parallel" may well be the key to generating real profits in this bull market.
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Haotian | CryptoInsight
