Bull Market

A bull market is a sustained period of rising prices and growing positive sentiment. The term comes from traditional finance and applies to any asset; in Bitcoin it has a particular rhythm.

Bitcoin's price history through 2025 shows roughly four major bull cycles, each peaking 12-18 months after a halving:

• 2010-2011 - $0.001 → $30s. The "early adopters" era.
• 2013 - $13 → $1,100. The Mt. Gox / Silk Road era, ended by major exchange failures.
• 2016-2017 - $400 → $20,000. SegWit activation, retail mania.
• 2020-2021 - $5,000 → $69,000. COVID money printing, MicroStrategy and Tesla, El Salvador adoption.
• 2024-2025 - $40,000 → $100,000+. Spot ETFs, post-halving cycle continuation.

The pattern is real. Whether it's causal (the halving reduces issuance, demand catches up, price rises) or coincidental (cycles happen for unrelated reasons that just line up with halvings) is endlessly debated. With n=3 or n=4 complete cycles, there isn't enough data to settle the question rigorously.

What's reliably true about bull markets:

• They feel infinite while you're in one. "This time is different" is a phrase you'll hear a lot. Sometimes it is; usually it isn't.
• They attract speculative excess. Altcoins, leverage, complex derivatives, NFTs, anything with a story. Most of it underperforms BTC by the time the cycle ends.
• They end. Either with a defined top followed by a bear market, or by transitioning into a slower-grinding pattern. The transition is rarely obvious in real time.

The Bitcoiner discipline during a bull market is to remember the volatility is symmetric. The same forces that drove the asset up tend to drive it back down. People who DCA and HODL through the cycle generally do better than people who try to time it. Predictions about "this cycle's top" are entertaining and unreliable.

See Volatility for the underlying market dynamic.