The peak arrived on schedule. The low did not. Here is where bitcoin sits on day 888, and what the last two cycles looked like at the same point.
Bitcoin is about C$120,300, 32% under its record, and roughly 50% above a summer low. In the last two cycles, day 888 fell within weeks of the bottom; this time the low came earlier and the fall was much shallower. Three cycles are too few to know which pattern holds.
Not financial advice.
The fourth halving cut the bitcoin mining reward on April 20, 2024. Today, September 25, 2026, is day 888 since then. One bitcoin costs about C$120,312 on CoinGecko's Canadian dollar page, roughly US$85,000. The record in Canadian dollars is C$175,909, so the price still sits about 32% under the top.
That top came in early October 2025, near US$126,000 according to CoinDesk, around day 534 of this cycle. From there bitcoin fell to about US$57,000 in July, the low Cointelegraph uses. CoinDesk puts the bottom in June, just under US$58,000. The two outlets disagree on the month, not on the size: a drop of roughly 55%. Since that low the price has climbed close to 50%.
Sentiment followed. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index on alternative.me reads 71 today, labelled "greed". A week ago it was 56 and a month ago 65.
The halving cycle is a pattern people read into a small number of past rounds. Here is what the same stretch of time looked like the last two times, using the dates and prices in Wikipedia's history of bitcoin and the halving dates.
| Cycle | Peak | Low after the peak | Fall | Day 888 landed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 halving (July 9, 2016) | US$19,783, December 17, 2017 (day 526) | Under US$3,300, December 7, 2018 (day 881) | About 83% | A week after the low |
| 2020 halving (May 11, 2020) | US$66,975, October 20, 2021 (day 527) | US$16,216, November 28, 2022 (day 931) | About 76% | Six weeks before the low |
| 2024 halving (April 20, 2024) | About US$126,000, October 2025 (day 534) | About US$57,000, summer 2026 (near day 800) | About 55% | Today, about 50% above the low |
Two things stand out. The peaks landed on almost the same day count each time, between day 526 and day 534. Few people expected that kind of regularity to survive the arrival of spot ETFs, and so far it has. The lows are where this cycle breaks from the script. In both earlier rounds, day 888 came within weeks of the bottom, with prices still crushed. This time the low arrived two or three months sooner and the fall was far shallower, so day 888 finds bitcoin well off its floor.
One detail in the 2020 row matters. The 2022 bottom came right after the FTX collapse, an event no calendar predicted. A crash like that can move a low by weeks in either direction, which is one reason the day counts only ever line up roughly.
Most of this week's news has little to do with halvings. The 10-year US Treasury yield closed at 5.11% on Wednesday, its highest level since 2007, and traders put the odds of a Federal Reserve rate hike at the October 28 meeting near 75%, Cointelegraph reported. Higher yields usually weigh on anything risky. Bitcoin dipped toward US$83,200 and then recovered.
Money kept arriving through the funds. US spot bitcoin ETFs were US$5.8 billion in net outflows for the year on July 13, and are now about US$800 million in net inflows, per CoinDesk's count of SoSoValue data. That swing includes roughly US$4 billion since August.
Smaller coins joined in. On Friday, 93 of the 100 coins in the CoinDesk 100 were higher over 24 hours, and the altcoin season index reached 56 out of 100, up from 45 a week earlier and its highest in three months, according to CoinDesk. Friday is also a large options expiry on Deribit. Decrypt counts about US$15.6 billion in bitcoin options; CoinDesk's figure of more than US$17 billion includes ether. Expiries can jolt prices for a day or two and rarely mean anything after that.
Three completed cycles is a thin record. The halving reduces how many new coins reach the market, and that supply cut shrinks with every round: today's miners receive 3.125 BTC per block, a small slice next to the dollars flowing through ETFs every day. Some analysts think the four-year rhythm is fading for exactly that reason. Others point to the peak landing on schedule again as evidence that crowd behaviour, not supply, keeps the pattern alive, because enough people expect it.
Both views fit the data we have, and three examples cannot settle the argument. What the table does show is the range of outcomes a holder has already lived through: falls of 55% to 83% from the top, and roughly a year from peak to floor. If an 80% drop would make you sell, the cycle framework cannot help you, because you would be out before any recovery arrived. The crypto cycle guide goes through the places where the pattern has bent before.
Also keep this cycle's shallow bear in view. If the low really came in the summer, then many people who waited for a textbook 80% drop are still waiting. If it did not, a lower low is still possible. Nobody can tell you which one this is today, and anyone who sounds certain is guessing.
Fonte vaults follow a written version of this calendar, set out in the post on buying about a year after the top. The next scheduled move into a BTC and ETH basket is October 19, 2026, day 912. Until then each vault sits in Aave USDC lending on Base, paying 4.01% today, a variable rate that averaged 3.7% over the last 30 days.
The vault is your own smart account, Fonte never holds your money, and you can withdraw to a Canadian bank by Interac e-Transfer any time. The rule is fit to only two or three past cycles, and its backtest went through drawdowns of 59 to 69%. Backtested results are not a promise. See how a vault works.
As of September 25, 2026, it is day 888 since the April 2024 halving. The price peaked in October 2025, about day 534, and fell roughly 55% to a low in June or July 2026. In the two previous cycles, the low came between day 881 and day 931.
The next halving is expected in 2028, when the block reward drops from 3.125 BTC to about 1.5625 BTC. It happens every 210,000 blocks, so the exact date depends on how fast blocks are mined, and estimates move by days or weeks.
Nobody knows. This cycle's peak landed on almost the same day count as the last two, which supports the pattern. Its bear market was much shallower and ended sooner, which does not. Three completed cycles are too few to settle it.
From the 2017 peak to the December 2018 low, about 83%. From the October 2021 record to the November 2022 low, about 76%. In the current cycle, the fall from October 2025 to the summer 2026 low was about 55%.
Disclaimer: This article is general information, not financial, investment, legal or tax advice. Crypto assets are volatile and you can lose money, including your entire deposit. Figures quoted from third parties are as reported by those sources on the date shown and can change. Smart contracts can contain flaws.
