Bitcoin’s latest post-halving cycle is tracking closely with historical precedent, and the market may still have further downside ahead, according to Michael Terpin, CEO of Transform Ventures.
Speaking at Consensus Hong Kong 2026, Terpin said the current market structure mirrors prior four-year cycles, making recent bullish bottom calls appear overly optimistic.
Claims that bitcoin had already bottomed at $80,000 and would face only a brief six-week downturn struck him as unrealistic. He was similarly skeptical of projections that the asset would stabilize at $60,000 and immediately resume its upward trajectory.
While Terpin stopped short of forecasting an extended, year-long bear market, he warned that the environment remains fragile and could deliver “one more point of pain.” In his view, bitcoin may need to revisit the $50,000 range — or even dip back into the $40,000s — before establishing a sustainable base.
At the center of his outlook is bitcoin’s halving mechanism, which reduces miner rewards roughly every four years and slows the rate of new supply entering the market. The programmed supply shock reinforces bitcoin’s scarcity and gradually lowers its inflation rate, ultimately capping issuance at 21 million coins.
Historically, halving events have set the stage for powerful bull markets as constrained supply meets rising demand. But they have also been followed by speculative peaks and sharp corrections.
“We are exactly where we should be,” Terpin said, emphasizing the reliability of bitcoin’s four-year cycle tied to halving events.
He noted that prior cycles have shown a consistent pattern: the bull market peak typically arrives in the fourth quarter following a halving, with the speculative blow-off phase lasting between nine and 11 months. In the current cycle, he said, that euphoric stretch lasted 11 months.
Terpin pointed to the previous cycle as a clear example. Bitcoin topped on Nov. 10, 2021, and the subsequent low came shortly after the bankruptcy of FTX on Nov. 10, 2022 — almost precisely one year later.
For Terpin, that symmetry reinforces the idea that today’s correction is not unusual but rather consistent with bitcoin’s historical boom-and-bust rhythm
