Bitcoin boomed earlier this year, but its seemingly magical momentum didn’t last. In the last quarter, the token surrendered its gains, placing the flagship cryptocurrency on track to finish 2025 in the red. The world’s oldest cryptocurrency was last trading at $88,242, down about 6% on the year, or about 30% off its record high of around $126,000 hit in early October.
There are several near-term catalysts that could lead bitcoin to rally in 2026, including a growing crop of crypto exchange-traded funds that are poised to increase investors’ access to bitcoin, as well as growing regulatory and policy support for the crypto industry at large. Separately, investors can look at the enterprise-value-to-bitcoin-holdings ratio of Strategy, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, as another potential indicator of the cryptocurrency’s future price action. But while analysts are betting on bitcoin’s rebound, some long-time holders are bracing for more crypto carnage.
That’s because bitcoin’s traditional four-year cycle suggests the token could tumble further in 2026. The four-year cycle is a historical price pattern tied to the halving, an event that reduces the incentives for bitcoin miners by half every four years. Based on that pattern, bitcoin is set to plunge further into the red in its post-halving period, with the token typically seeing drawdowns of about 80% or more. The last halving took place in 2024.
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