Gold has already broken higher. Bitcoin is still coiling. That contrast is starting to draw attention among macro and crypto analysts, as capital rotations between traditional safe havens and digital assets have historically followed a familiar sequence.
Gold tends to move first when long-term confidence in fiat weakens. Bitcoin usually follows later, after pressure has fully compressed.
Key takeaways
Gold’s breakout often precedes Bitcoin’s major expansions, and that pattern may be repeating
Bitcoin remains below its long-term trend, suggesting discount rather than euphoria
Statistical models increasingly reject a fixed four-year cycle for Bitcoin
Cycle expansion implies choppy conditions before a larger multi-year move
Right now, that setup appears to be forming again.
Gold has already pushed through long-term resistance, confirming a structural breakout rather than a short-term spike. In previous cycles, similar gold moves marked the early phase of broader capital reallocation, not the end of it.
Bitcoin, by contrast, has not yet made its decisive move. Instead, price action shows multi-year compression, volatility squeezed to historical lows, and repeated defenses of long-term support. This kind of structure typically does not resolve sideways. When it breaks, it tends to do so forcefully, resetting the entire range.
Liquidity tests often come first. Expansion follows later, once pressure has nowhere left to go.
Bitcoin remains below its long-term trend
Long-term cycle modeling suggests Bitcoin is still trading below its structural trend rather than above it. Using a log-periodic power law (LPPL) framework applied to roughly 17 years of data and more than 5,600 daily observations, the current price appears materially discounted relative to trend.
With Bitcoin trading near $91,500 while the modeled trend sits around $124,500, the implied gap is roughly 26%. That positioning does not resemble euphoria. Instead, it points to a market that is still hesitant, despite years of accumulation and compression.
Historically, this is the phase where many participants remain defensive, waiting for a deeper crash that never fully materializes.
Why the classic four-year cycle is breaking down
One of the most important conclusions from the LPPL analysis is the statistical rejection of a fixed four-year Bitcoin cycle. When comparing a traditional four-year halving-based model with the LPPL framework, the difference in explanatory power is decisive.
The LPPL model produces a substantially lower AIC score, outperforming the fixed-cycle model by more than 1,100 points. In practical terms, that gap is not a close call. It suggests that Bitcoin’s cycles are no longer rigid or evenly spaced.
As the market matures and grows in size, cycles appear to stretch. Peaks and expansions take longer to develop, while corrections become more complex and uneven rather than sharp and symmetrical.
What that means for 2026 and beyond
If cycles are expanding instead of repeating on a strict schedule, it opens the door for a different type of market behavior in 2026. Rather than a clean, vertical bull run, the period ahead may remain choppy, frustrating, and heavily influenced by liquidity conditions and macro developments.
That does not invalidate the bullish case. Historically, similar transition phases in 2015 and 2019 came just before sustained multi-year advances. Under this framework, momentum begins to turn after 2026, with the strongest expansion window potentially unfolding between 2027 and 2029.
In that context, higher long-term price targets no longer look extreme. They reflect extended time horizons rather than speculative excess.
