Why the US election could put a timer on this bitcoin bull market

Bitcoin has now been in a bull market for 686 days, ever since it bottomed out below $15,500 in November 2022 amid the FTX fiasco.

The past three bull markets lasted between 1,047 and 1,278 days. That’s counting from when the price of bitcoin hits its local floor, past its cycle peak and finishes alongside its ultimate correction.

So, bitcoin is now firmly in the second half of its current bull market — if the cycles since 2011 are anything to go by.

We already know that bitcoin returns have diminished every cycle. As to be expected: Bitcoin went from a market cap of a few million to over $12 billion in its first major bull cycle starting in 2011, or up to 620x returns.

Read more: Bitcoin halvings may be bullish — but returns have shrunk every cycle

Then, it went from a few billion in 2015 to almost $300 billion in 2018 (103x returns) and then to $1.2 trillion by the 2021 peak (21x), which is more or less the market valuation it has today.

If bitcoin this time around were to undergo the same degree of growth as it did between 2018 and 2022, then it would need to rally from a $300 billion market cap to a $6.3 trillion one — which would make it almost twice as valuable as Apple stock.

Loyal Empire newsletter readers would recognize this chart. It plots bull markets against each other, as if they all started at once, to gauge just how high bitcoin goes, and for how long.

If bitcoin were truly bigger than Apple right now, the price of BTC would be $1.32 million (current price: $63,000). For scale, Fundstrat managing partner and perennial bull-poster Tom Lee has previously said that BTC could hit $150,000 by the end of the year, and $500,000 in the next five years.

With this in mind, bitcoin has done remarkably well this cycle.

Notice that the purple line above — the current bull market — started off more or less in line with the three previous cycles, thanks to a monster opening in 2023.

But a brief reversal to below $20,000 saw bitcoin start to lag behind at around day 100, before catching up quickly after day 300. Hype around a potential BlackRock bitcoin ETF hype really percolated around then.

After that point, bitcoin was outpacing the 2018 to 2022 market cycle. It even briefly eclipsed the returns seen in the ripper price action between 2015 and 2018, culminating in a March all-time high which atypically occurred before the Bitcoin halving.

Here’s a similar chart but for the cap growth for the rest of the crypto market. The current altcoin cycle is well below the previous two.

But bitcoin has been trending sideways for long enough now that it is no longer outpacing any of the previous bull markets.

And it was about this time that each run really accelerated: Bitcoin has reached its cycle top somewhere between day 750 and day 1,060 into each bull market, and prices usually spent hundreds of days ramping up to reach those peaks.

It could be that bitcoin made most of its gains in the first 500 days of this bull market. That would certainly align with the trend of diminishing returns.

Or, bitcoin is simply late to the real bull run, due to crescendo over the next eight months or so — a period that would interestingly end about five months into the next US president’s first term, in June 2025.

Read more: As BTC rallies after jobs report, what are the ‘Uptober’ odds?

If there was a case to be made for the election outcome being pivotal for the state of crypto markets, this might just do it.

Still, at least going by how the previous bitcoin bull markets have played out, it could be that whatever immediate impact the election has marks the beginning of the end of the cycle.

A modified version of this article first appeared in the daily Empire newsletter. Subscribe here so you don’t miss tomorrow’s edition.

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