A year ago, bitcoin printed its all-time high near $126,000. Twelve months later it trades around $84,000, and the drawdown looks very different from the cycles before it.
đ The news
Per CoinDesk, $BTC is roughly 32% below its October 6, 2025 record. The deepest point of this cycle came on June 30, just under $59,000, a 53% fall from the peak.
đ The numbers
âą One year after the 2013 peak, bitcoin was down 69.7%, per CoinDesk.
âą One year after the December 2017 peak, it was down 82.3%.
âą One year after the November 2021 peak, it was down 74.6%.
âą Annualized volatility is now around 40%, compared with readings above 80% in earlier cycles.
đ Why it matters
The buyer base has changed. Spot ETFs and asset managers now hold a large share of supply, and as one analyst told CoinDesk, allocation money rebalances to target weights, so it tends to buy weakness by design. That does not prevent drops, but it can soften them.
âïž Bull vs bear case
âą Bull: lower volatility and steady institutional bids could keep this a mid-cycle correction rather than a classic 75% to 85% bear market.
âą Bear: the 30-year Treasury yield recently hit 5.7%, per CoinDesk, raising the cost of holding an asset with no yield. Leverage is a risk too; the October 10, 2025 flush wiped out over $19 billion.
đ What to watch next
Fed minutes, US yields and ETF flows. Spot bitcoin ETFs shed $89.9 million on Monday after two days of inflows, per Cointelegraph. On the chart, Cointelegraph flags the 2026 yearly open near $87,570 as resistance, while the $82,500 area has acted as the floor since late September.
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đĄ My take: A 32% drawdown hurts, but the data says this cycle behaves more like a maturing macro asset than a pure speculation. In my view, rates and fund flows now explain bitcoin better than the old four-year script.
đŹ Do you think the four-year cycle still applies to bitcoin?
#Bitcoin #BTC