I honestly don’t know why people keep saying it’s not the thing. I mean, Bitcoin tops when it always tops, like every cycle, it tops in the fourth quarter, Cowen tells Magazine.

I think that makes a lot of sense in terms of just playing out like it always does, and everyone’s going through like these mental gymnastics to figure out why it has to be different when it’s not really that different, Cowen says.

2026 is likely a bear market year, says Cowen

Despite all the talk about structural changes institutional adoption, ETFs and macro catalysts Cowen says the market is still following the same broad pattern and is already playing out in familiar territory, following its October all-time high of $126,000.

I do think it’s a bear market year. I don’t think that Bitcoin is going to be hitting all-time highs in 2026, he says, pointing out that the last two bear markets lasted about a year.

Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $126,000 in October before entering a downtrend, which saw the asset’s price fall as low as $60,000 in February, before recently bumping up above $70,000.

Cowen ponders whether the bear market is just simply October 2025 to October 2026.

He isnt the only one who thinks Bitcoin may bottom around the same time. Veteran trader Peter Brandt recently predicted that Bitcoin could fall as low as $60,000 by the third quarter of 2026.

Cowen is going against a pack of big-name Bitcoin industry execs

Cowens view puts him at odds with several prominent industry figures, including Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju, Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan and CEO Hunter Horsley and Real Vision founder Raoul Pal, who all believe the traditional four-year cycle is dead.

Asset management firm Grayscale said in December 2025 that it expects rising valuations in 2026 and the end of the so-called four-year cycle, or the theory that crypto market direction follows a recurring four-year pattern.

But Cowen, who has amassed 1.1 million followers on X, isnt exactly some random voice on Crypto Twitter. He has a PhD in what might be the most intimidating title imaginable: Molecular dynamics simulations of radiation damage in ceramics.

Before becoming a crypto chart analyst, Cowen studied aerospace engineering and landed an internship at NASA. He eventually decided that wasnt for him and later switched to a degree in math and physics.

So its probably fair to assume hes put a little more thought into the four-year cycle debate than the average influencer.

Bitcoin capital didn’t rotate into altcoins this time around

If there was one key difference this cycle, Cowen says it wasnt the timing; it was the lack of a major altcoin mania.

Cowen said this is due to the top of this cycle in October 2025 being most similar to that of the 2019 top.

Part of the comparison comes down to macro conditions, Cowen says.

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The reason you can say that is because if you look at, say, like the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve back then, Bitcoin topped out two months before quantitative tightening ended, just like it topped out right here, a couple of months before quantitative tightening ended, he explains.

He says based on social media interest, Bitcoin topped on apathy rather than euphoria.

So in 2021 and in 2017, Bitcoin topped on euphoria. And when you top on euphoria, when you have a parabolic rally, then you get a rotation into high-risk assets, like altcoins, he explains.

But when you top on apathy, like in 2019, you don’t get that rotation. And the reason you don’t get that rotation is that there’s just no one left to sell the altcoins to, he adds.

Dealing with being wrong on social media

Cowen hasnt exactly been shy about making market calls over the years. And when youre doing that in front of a huge audience, youre bound to cop some heat when things dont go the way people hoped.

He says his biggest mistake this cycle came in Q4 2023. At the time, he expected Bitcoin to stall below $35,000 and trade sideways for the rest of the year, then resume higher in 2024. Instead, the market had other plans and broke out in October 2023.

That ended up playing out, you know, differently than how I thought it was going to, and I kind of had to lick my wounds for a little while after that one, Cowen says.

When you do make a lot of public calls about larger investing themes, when they play out, it’s great; when they don’t play out, you hear about it for a long time.

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source: https://www.tradingview.com/news/cointelegraph:c30345011094b:0-the-debate-over-bitcoin-s-four-year-cycle-is-over-benjamin-cowen/