By David Canellis
Compiled by: BitpushNews Scott Liu
If you believe that Bitcoin is still in a bull market, we are already in day 640 of the bull market. A few hundred days ago, back in January of this year, the performance of the Bitcoin market was roughly consistent with the previous two bull cycles: a return rate of just under 4.5 times.
However, if we go back further, Bitcoin quickly gained momentum during the 2015 to 2018 cycle. From January to July 2017, Bitcoin went from $800 to over $2,800.
Finally, by the end of 2017, Bitcoin had risen to nearly $20,000, a record high that would not be broken for three years.
If we compare different bull runs to each other, the cycle that Bitcoin is closer to today is 2018 to 2022. As shown by the brown line in the chart above, its market return so far is 278%.
But not all cryptocurrencies are as bullish as Bitcoin.
Take Ethereum, for example. It hasn’t come this close to surpassing Bitcoin in three and a half years.
The ETH/BTC ratio, or the price of Ethereum against Bitcoin, has fallen by nearly half since the end of 2021. Meanwhile, Solana has never been so close to surpassing Ethereum. At this time last year, Solana’s market cap was just 4% of Ethereum’s — $9.3 billion versus $217.2 billion. Now, it’s at 22%, $66 billion versus $307.6 billion.
The same chart analysis shows Solana’s potential to surpass Ethereum. But how long can this bull run last? All we can do is compare the length of previous bull runs, which varies in different models.
The simplest approach is to use the bottom of Bitcoin as the start of the bull market and end it when the future market downtrend is fully confirmed.
According to this approach:
Our current bull run began on November 9, 2022, when Bitcoin fell below $15,670 after FTX shut down withdrawals — 642 days ago. The previous three bull runs lasted between 1047 days (2015-2018) and 1278 days (2018-2022). If Bitcoin is destined to follow these four-year cycles as usual (there are no guarantees here), then we are already halfway through our current cycle. If the bull run is over, it will be the shortest in Bitcoin’s history — not including the two-year initial price discovery phase after the genesis block.
Of course, past performance is no indicator of future results. But that doesn’t stop us from having fun. If the bull run continues and Bitcoin’s price action is indeed still cyclical, then we’d have to keep going higher from now on to fit these patterns.
Therefore, based on the length of the previous three bull runs, Bitcoin should continue to rise until the middle of next year - which is consistent with the predictions of some analysts.
