Ran Neuner suggests that Bitcoin’s true market cycle is influenced by global liquidity and PMI, rather than the enduring four-year halving myth that traders continue to believe.
Summary
- YouTuber Ran Neuner asserts that the four-year Bitcoin halving cycle is a reassuring yet misleading notion based on just three data points.
- He illustrates that previous Bitcoin price movements aligned with global liquidity, central bank balance sheets, and PMI, contradicting the halving timeline.
- With the end of tightening and liquidity set to increase, he cautions that retail selling now could mean parting with inexpensive coins to institutions.
Ran Neuner claims Bitcoin’s renowned four-year cadence isn’t shattered but was never the genuine metronome of the market. In a concise 17-minute episode of Crypto Insider, he dismantles the sector’s cherished calendar myth, replacing it with a grimmer primary variable: global liquidity.
Halving as comforting illusion
Neuner begins by warning, “if you’re about to sell your crypto because you believe the recent cycle has just ended, you’re making a mistake that will benefit the institutions.” He acknowledges that in the last three halving cycles “Bitcoin typically reached its peak around now” in the post-halving year, with common 80 percent retracements conditioning traders to anticipate a time-based bear market predictably. He argues that the halving schedule provided analysts with “three complete cycles of data” and a comforting narrative that made the market feel predictable, but “anyone with statistical knowledge would assert that three data points do not constitute a meaningful sample size.”
Rather than accepting the trend at face value, Neuner integrated macroeconomic, liquidity, equity, and political data into “one chart and model,” revealing that while the halving “certainly played a role, it was a minor factor.” He asserts, “The real surge in Bitcoin (BTC) prices was not induced by the halving; it was fueled by a much larger force” that presented itself across all three previous cycles but remains absent in the current one.
Liquidity as real cycle driver
That more substantial force is quantitative easing and the broader augmentation of the global money supply. Reflecting on earlier bull markets, Neuner notes that post the first halving in late 2012, Bitcoin’s ascent from $10 to $1,250 coincided with the Federal Reserve infusing “$85 billion in liquidity into the market each month,” ultimately adding over $1 trillion to its balance sheet. When the Fed began tapering and eventually halting QE, Bitcoin dropped from approximately $1,000 to $150, a decline that “aligns perfectly with the halving cycle” but was, in his view, driven by liquidity reduction.
PMI, institutions and the “real” clock
To ground his argument measurably, Neuner refers to the global Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), which he characterizes as “the essential metric that monitors” whether the economy is growing or contracting. He observes that when PMI bottoms and surpasses 50, “that’s the moment liquidity begins to return,” and historically, Bitcoin finds a base, while readings exceeding 55 have heralded the commencement of “actual bull runs,” and levels around 60 have coincided with what he terms the “altcoin super cycle.” In both the 2017 and 2020 cycles, he notes, the PMI surpassed those levels simultaneously as central banks were amplifying their balance sheets and crypto markets surged.
A warning to retail sellers
Neuner’s conclusion is stark: “We have never entered a bear market in a period of expanding liquidity. Never, not once in history.” With the Federal Reserve indicating an end to tightening, lower rates on the horizon, and an eventual reversion to QE, he anticipates the PMI to “start to soar” and institutional algorithms to shift decidedly into “risk on” mode. “Do you really think Larry Fink has a rainbow chart on his wall?” he questions. “Do you think Larry Fink worries about the four-year cycle? He doesn’t. But I assure you he’s monitoring liquidity. I assure you he’s keeping an eye on the Fed’s balance sheet… and the PMI.”
Interpreting the current downturn as a setup, he tells viewers that selling now due to anxiety over a “four-year cycle phantom” means “selling your coins literally at the bottom” to institutional buyers just before the liquidity cycle genuinely picks up. “The four-year cycle was a fallacy,” Neuner states in his closing comments. “This cycle isn’t concluded. In fact, if anything, this cycle hasn’t even begun.”
