Halving-to-Peak

The halving is the only cycle landmark that is scheduled rather than discovered. Peaks and bottoms can only be identified after the fact and can be revised later. A halving happens at a fixed point in Bitcoin's software, and its timing is known well ahead.

That makes this structurally different from the other two timing indicators. It cannot start from the wrong place, which is the largest source of error in the peak and bottom versions. Whatever else it gets wrong, it always knows where it is measuring from.

The output is how far through a typical halving-to-peak stretch we are. Because the starting point is fixed and known, this reading advances steadily and is the least likely of the three to jump for reasons unrelated to time passing.

It measures a pattern, not a mechanism. A halving reduces how fast new Bitcoin is created, but that reduction is small next to daily trading volume, and the indicator does not claim the halving causes the peak that follows it.

A peak has followed each of the halvings in the sample, at intervals ranging from around a year to about eighteen months. As with the other timing indicators, the gain from halving to peak has shrunk with each cycle.

The first halving is excluded because the price history around it is too thin to be useful. That leaves very few observations, and any range drawn from them carries far more real uncertainty than a precise-looking number suggests.

The cause-and-effect story is weaker than the pattern implies. An equally reasonable reading is that halvings and peaks have both been carried along by a four-year rhythm in money and attention that the halving happens to sit inside.

Spot ETFs arrived only recently in Bitcoin's history, so most of the cycles in this sample predate that market structure entirely.