Ran Neuner argues bitcoin’s apparent four‑year cycle is a comforting but misleading myth built on only three data points — and that the true driver of market booms and busts is global liquidity, tracked by central bank balance sheets and the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI).
Neuner opens by warning retail holders against selling simply because they expect a time‑based bear market tied to the halving. While the past three post‑halving years did see sharp tops and steep drawdowns that conditioned traders to anticipate a calendar‑driven cycle, he stresses that three cycles are too small a sample to prove causation. Pulling macro, liquidity, equity and political data into a single model, Neuner finds the halving “played a part, but it was a small factor.” The much larger and consistent force across prior cycles was liquidity — quantitative easing and broader money‑supply expansion.
He revisits earlier bull runs to illustrate the point. After the first halving in late 2012, bitcoin rose from about $10 to roughly $1,250 as the Federal Reserve was injecting massive liquidity — around $85 billion a month and eventually over $1 trillion added to its balance sheet. When QE slowed and ended, bitcoin fell from roughly $1,000 to $150. Similarly, the 2017 run from roughly $1,000 to $20,000 unfolded alongside large ECB bond purchases, unprecedented BOJ buying of bonds and ETFs, and China’s huge credit impulse. The Covid‑era rally from about $4,000 to $69,000 tracked what Neuner calls the largest global liquidity injection in financial history, with the Fed expanding its balance sheet by more than $5 trillion and other central banks following suit.
To anchor the theory, Neuner points to the global PMI as a measurable signal of economic expansion or contraction. When PMI bottoms and then moves above 50, liquidity tends to return and bitcoin has historically found a floor. Readings above 55 have coincided with the starts of major bull runs, and levels around 60 have aligned with broader “altcoin super cycles.” In 2017 and 2020 he notes PMI crossed those thresholds while central banks expanded balance sheets and crypto markets surged.
Neuner argues that in the current cycle the halving clock and the liquidity clock decoupled. Over the last two years the Fed practiced quantitative tightening and PMI was flat to slightly down; that combination, he says, explains why bitcoin failed to rally this cycle despite the halving narrative. The halving and liquidity signals were correlated in three prior cycles but not this one, leaving traders anchored to a calendar that no longer reflected underlying macro conditions.
His blunt conclusion: historically, markets have not entered bear phases when liquidity was expanding. With the Fed signaling an end to tightening, an expectation of lower rates ahead and a likely eventual shift back toward easier policy, Neuner expects PMI to recover and institutional risk‑on algorithms to reengage. He warns that if retail investors sell now out of fear of a “four‑year cycle ghost,” they will hand cheap coins to institutions just before liquidity fuels the next leg up.
Neuner’s closing point: the four‑year cycle was a comforting story, not the true metronome. Liquidity — the Fed balance sheet, global QE and macro indicators like PMI — is the real clock institutions watch. Sell on halving fear, he cautions, and you may be selling at the bottom; this cycle, he says, may not have truly begun.
