Is Bitcoin's 'four-year cycle' ending… Why did 'Uptober' disappear? [Hankyung Koala]

Kim Min-seung's ₿ficial

Every year when the fourth quarter begins, participants in the crypto market expect 'Uptober'. Historical data supports that expectation. Since 2013, Bitcoin's average October monthly return over 12 years has exceeded 20% and has shown a clear bullish pattern. In early October 2025, when Bitcoin renewed its intrayear high at US$125,700, optimism ran high that it could reach US$150,000 within the year. However, it moved in the exact opposite direction. As a result, Bitcoin closed October with a meager -5.2% performance, and investors had to end the month disappointed. What stole Uptober?

The biggest reason was that the variables determining the direction of the crypto market were now external rather than internal. On October 10, U.S. President Donald Trump's remarks froze the market. Ahead of a meeting with President Xi Jinping, he said he would "make a fantastic trade deal with China," but warned that if talks failed he could raise tariffs sharply. That single comment was enough to dampen sentiment in asset markets already mixed with hope and concern, and the shock erupted dramatically in the crypto market.

The external shock immediately struck the market's fragile internal structure. Long leveraged positions that had been excessively accumulated in anticipation of Uptober were liquidated in large volumes, and at the same time an error occurred in Binance's asset price valuation system, resulting in the largest liquidation event in crypto market history. The problem was a structure that relied only on Binance's internal prices rather than independent external oracles when valuing the collateral of certain assets such as USDE. As the market crashed and internal errors caused the values of those assets to be abnormally marked down, numerous investors' positions linked to them were sequentially force-liquidated or automatically deleveraged (ADL). A data feed error that momentarily showed some altcoin prices as '0' added to the confusion and spread it across the entire market. In the end, positions worth US$19.1 billion were liquidated in just 24 hours, and trust was shaken to its roots.

In the last week of October, while the aftershocks of the crash remained, the market's last hope was a shift in the Fed's monetary policy. On October 29, the Fed cut the benchmark rate by 0.25 percentage points, but Chair Jerome Powell was cautious about further cuts in December, and the market interpreted this as a "hawkish cut." The very next day, October 30, disappointment grew when the U.S.-China summit amounted to a 'tactical truce' without concrete solutions to core conflicts. Such macroeconomic uncertainty further depressed investor sentiment, and the crypto market, which had been showing a weak recovery after the October 10 crash, fell again along with the stock market.

October 2025 proved that the crypto market can no longer move separately from global asset markets. An external variable in the form of Trump burst the market's overheated leverage, and Binance's liquidation event exposed its internal vulnerabilities. When the Fed and the leaders of the U.S. and China failed to meet market expectations, Bitcoin fell alongside equities. This indicates that the crypto market is entering a mature asset class that must consider global macroeconomic variables and internal structural soundness together, rather than relying on independent narratives or seasonality.

It also suggests a possible end to the traditional 'four-year cycle' centered on Bitcoin halving. Past Bitcoin price cycles were driven by internal factors such as reduced supply from halvings, but now the influx of institutional investors via spot ETFs and crypto-related companies and synchronization with the macroeconomy are causing prices to move differently from historical patterns. As Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX, argued, Bitcoin prices may now be more dependent on flows of global liquidity than on halving cycles. Of course, the counterargument that this is not the complete end of the 'four-year cycle' but a transitional phenomenon in which institutional inflows and macroeconomic factors transform the cycle remains valid.

The missing Uptober poses an important question. Now that the crypto market has begun to follow the grammar of traditional finance, past successful formulas may no longer hold. As markets mature, prediction becomes harder and variables more complex. But this is not a pessimistic sign. Rather, it is a natural growing pain as crypto is recognized not as the domain of a few but as a pillar of the global economy.

Our view must now go beyond chart movements to simultaneously see the White House's moves, interstate agreements, geopolitical conflicts, technological innovation and trends, and Wall Street's capital flows. Institutionalization of the crypto market is progressing rapidly not only in legislation and administration but also within the market itself.

Kim Min-seung, head of the Korbit Research Center...

He is a founding member and director of the Korbit Research Center. He explains complex events and concepts occurring in the blockchain and crypto ecosystem in simple terms and helps people with different perspectives understand each other. He has experience in blockchain project strategy planning and software development.

▶This article is an externally contributed column introduced to provide various perspectives to subscribers of a cryptocurrency investment newsletter and does not represent the position of The Korea Economic Daily.