The Four-Year Cycle Has Been Broken: How to Invest in Cryptocurrency in the New Normal?

Original Author: Haotian, Crypto Researcher

Just had a discussion with several industry veterans, and everyone is talking about the same thing... The theory of a "four-year cycle" is completely outdated! If you are still holding on for overnight riches and dreaming of a "hands-off opportunity for a tenfold or hundredfold bull market," you may have already been completely abandoned by the market. Why? Because smart money has long discovered a secret: the current Crypto world no longer follows a single playbook but rather operates on 4 completely different playcycles simultaneously:

Each playcycle has a completely different rhythm, gameplay, and money-making logic.

Bitcoin Supercycle: Retail Exodus, A Ten-Year Bull Run in the Making

The traditional halving cycle "script"? Completely obsolete! BTC has evolved from a "pump and dump target" to an "institutional asset allocation," where the fund size and allocation logic of Wall Street, publicly traded companies, and ETFs are not the same as the retail investors' "bull-bear transition" playbook.

Where is the key change? Retail chips are being massively relinquished, while institutional funds represented by MicroStrategy are madly entering the scene. This fundamental reshaping of chip structure is redefining BTC's price discovery mechanism and volatility characteristics.

What are retail investors facing? A double squeeze of "time cost" and "opportunity cost." Institutions can afford to hold for 3-5 years to wait for BTC's long-term value realization, but what about retail investors? Obviously, they do not have the patience or financial strength for this kind of commitment.

In my view, we are likely to witness a super slow bull run for BTC lasting over ten years. The annualized return rate will stabilize in the range of 20-30%, but the intraday volatility will significantly decrease, resembling more of a steadily growing tech stock. As for how high BTC's price ceiling will be, it is even difficult to predict from the current retail perspective.

MEME Attention Shortwave Cycle: From Slumdog Pleasure Garden to Professional Rug Pulling Venue

The MEME long bull theory actually holds. During the technical narrative performance gap, the MEME narrative will always come in to fill the market's "boredom vacuum" in conjunction with the rhythm of emotions, funds, and attention.

What is the essence of MEME? It is a speculative vehicle for "instant gratification." No need for a whitepaper, no need for technical validation, no need for a roadmap; all it needs is a symbol that can make people smile knowingly or resonate emotionally. From cat-dog culture to political MEME, from AI concept packaging to community IP incubation, MEME has evolved into a complete "emotional monetization" industry chain.

What's remarkable is that the "short, flat, and fast" nature of MEME has made it a barometer of market sentiment and a reservoir of funds. When funds are plentiful, MEME becomes the preferred testing ground for hot money; when funds are scarce, MEME once again becomes the ultimate speculative haven. However, reality is cruel, and the MEME market is evolving from "grassroots frenzy" to "professional competition." The difficulty for ordinary retail investors to profit from this high-frequency rotation is increasing exponentially. The legendary stories of little P players sitting idle and creating miracles may become fewer and fewer, and the entry of studios, scientists, and whales will lead to extreme internal competition within this once "slum paradise."

Technological Narrative Leap Cycle: Death Valley Bottom Fishing, Starting at 10x in 3 Years?

Has the technological narrative disappeared? Not at all. Truly innovative technologies with high barriers, such as Layer 2 scalability, ZK technology, AI infra, etc., require 2-3 years or even longer to see practical results. These projects follow the technology maturity curve (Gartner Hype Cycle) rather than the market sentiment cycle—there is a fundamental time misalignment between the two.

The reason the technological narrative has been criticized by the market is entirely because projects were overvalued when they were still in the conceptual stage, and then there was undervaluation in the "death valley" stage when the technology truly began to land. This determines that the value release of technical projects exhibits a non-linear leap-forward characteristic.

For patient and technologically savvy investors, positioning yourself in truly valuable technological projects during the "death valley" stage may be the best strategy to achieve excess returns. However, the prerequisite is that you must be able to endure a long waiting period and market turmoil, as well as potential sarcasm.

Innovation Mini Hotspot Short Cycle: 1-3 Month Window, Brewing the Main Rising Wave Narrative

Before the mainline technological narrative is formed, various mini narratives rotate rapidly, from RWA to DePIN, from AI Agent to AI Infra (MCP+A2A). Each mini hotspot may only have a 1-3 month window. This narrative fragmentation and high-frequency rotation reflect the dual constraints of current market attention scarcity and fund-seeking efficiency. In fact, it is not difficult to find that the typical mini-narrative cycle follows a six-stage model: "concept validation → fund probing → opinion amplification → FOMO entry → overvaluation → fund exit." Want to profit in this model?

The key is to enter during the "concept validation" to "fund probing" stage and exit at the peak of "FOMO entry." The competition between mini narratives is essentially a zero-sum game for attention resources. However, there is technological relevance and conceptual progression between narratives. For example, the MCP (Model Context Protocol) protocol and A2A (Agent-to-Agent) interaction standards in AI Infra are actually a technical reconstruction of the AI Agent narrative. If subsequent narratives can extend past hotspots, form a systematic upgrade linkage, and truly precipitate a sustainable value loop in the linkage process, it is very likely that a super narrative equivalent to DeFi Summer with a main rising wave level will emerge.

From the current small-narrative perspective, the AI infrastructure layer is most likely to achieve a breakthrough first. Foundational technologies such as the MCP protocol, A2A communication standard, distributed computing power, inference, data network, etc., if seamlessly integrated, do have the potential to construct a super narrative similar to an "AI Summer."

Above all. In general, understanding the essence of these four parallel gameplay cycles is the key to finding the right strategy in their respective rhythms. Undoubtedly, a single "four-year cycle" mindset is completely unable to keep up with the current market complexity. Adapting to the new normal of "multi-gameplay cycles in parallel" may indeed be the key to truly profiting in this bull market.

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