Produced by: Qinglan Crypto Classroom Market Information Department
Risk warning: This article is solely a study and review of industry cycles and trends, and does not constitute any investment advice. The digital asset market is highly volatile, posing a risk of total loss of principle. Participants must make independent judgments and rational decisions.
Technological revolutions do not emerge from thin air, nor do they follow cycles in isolation within a single industry. Whether it’s cryptocurrency, the early internet, mobile internet, or later new energy and AI tracks, the underlying logic is the same: Technological germination leads to story-telling → Capital gathers and inflates big bubbles → The bubble bursts, washing away speculators → Solid enterprises remain and steadily create value, leading to a long bull market.
Many people only focus on short-term fluctuations in the cryptocurrency circle, failing to understand the overall trend, and by chasing rises and selling on drops, they end up with diminishing capital over the years. The essential reason is that they haven’t stepped out of the current market conditions and failed to grasp the cyclical fate that the century-old technology industry has repeated countless times.
I analyze the complete three cycles of bulls and bears in cryptocurrency from 2011 to 2025, benchmarking against the real developmental history of the internet over decades, and solidly deducing the major trends from 2026 to 2029. I avoid empty talk and jargon, providing practical insights that ordinary people can understand and apply. Understanding this cycle will prevent you from being led by market emotions in the coming years.
First Cycle of Bulls and Bears (2011-2015): Geek Niche Speculation Period
Benchmarking against the internet industry: 1990—1994 Technological Germination Wilderness Period
Clearly Defined Time Frame
Bull market cycle: 2011 — November 2013
Bear market cycle: December 2013 — December 2015
Core Market Characteristics
During this time, it was hardly considered a financial market; it was more of a small circle played by enthusiasts, overseas forum old-timers, and early evangelists. There were no banks, no funds, and no traditional institutions interested in Bitcoin; it was entirely retail self-entertainment.
At that time, the trading experience was extremely poor, as global traffic was basically monopolized by Mt. Gox, leaving everyone with no choice but to deposit their money there. As a result, in 2014, Mt. Gox suffered a direct theft of 850,000 BTC, leading to the platform's bankruptcy and instantly crashing the market’s confidence, dragging the bear market for more than two years.
In that environment, no one talked about valuation, fundamentals, or revenue logic. People bought coins not by analysis, but through stories and the sentiment of the community. A few individuals could write a white paper, give it a trendy name, and launch a token; without technology, team, or grounding, some would still follow the trend. In the end, more than 90% of altcoins went to zero, and nearly all early speculators in those assets were completely wiped out.
Comparing it to the early internet makes it completely transparent: from 1990 to 1994, the internet was only played with by academic researchers and tech enthusiasts, with ordinary people having no access. There was no e-commerce, no social media, and no profit-making models; everyone just felt that "the internet is the future," but no one could explain how to make money. It was the same kind of barbaric growth, with no regulation and only relying on narratives to sustain interest, mirroring the early cryptocurrency circles.
Real Industry Case
The Bitcoin pizza event is the best example, where 10,000 BTC were exchanged for two pizzas, which is unimaginable today. Back then, no one thought this thing was valuable; it was just a small entertainment within the circle. There were countless early altcoins such as domain coins and prime-number coins that were hot at the time, but now barely anyone remembers them; they have been completely submerged in history.
Value and Market Laws
This round was purely speculative hype; no one looked at project grounding, real revenue, or user volume, only cared about who could tell the best story, whose community was the loudest, and who could pump prices hard enough. Market fluctuations of dozens of points in a single day were normal, completely lacking risk control and valuation constraints.
Compliance was also a blank slate; there was not a single country globally that defined or established rules for crypto assets, existing in a complete gray area where the safety of assets relied entirely on luck—platforms disappeared, projects raised funds without accountability, and nobody compensated.
Second Cycle of Bulls and Bears (2016-2019): Retail Investor Speculative Frenzy Period
Benchmarking against the internet industry: 1995—2002 Internet Bubble Carnival and Cleansing Period
Clearly Defined Time Frame
Bull market cycle: 2016 — December 2017
Bear market cycle: 2018 — December 2019
Core Market Characteristics
This was the first true national celebration in the cryptocurrency circle, and also the first cycle for most ordinary people entering the market. Ethereum ignited the smart contract boom, directly lowering the threshold for ICO token issuance to nearly zero, allowing anyone to issue tokens to raise funds.
During those two years, global retail investors flooded in, especially in Asia, becoming the absolute main force in the market. A few traditional VCs began tentatively investing in some projects, but they couldn’t influence the market; fluctuations were fully driven by retail sentiment.
The market had become insane, with global liquidity easing; there was money flooding into new concept tracks. As long as your project was related to blockchain, decentralization, or ecological empowerment, regardless of whether there was any real substance, it could raise funds successfully, with token prices doubling and doubling again. Countless vaporware teams utilized ICOs to fleece investors, raising funds after writing white papers, and when the money was in hand, they would lie flat and run off, too lazy to even update code.
After the craziness, a harsh correction was inevitable. In 2018, global regulations suddenly tightened; ICOs and virtual currency trading were directly banned in China, while the U.S. SEC rigorously scrutinized fraudulent token issuance, and South Korea and Hong Kong simultaneously cracked down. The bubble was suddenly popped, leading to a protracted bear market that wore down the patience and capital of many.
In comparison to the internet from 1995 to 2002, it is practically the same script. The IPO of Netscape sparked a nationwide internet frenzy; as long as a company's name had ".com," regardless of profitability, it would be wildly speculated upon. People only looked at traffic and click rates, ignoring profits and business models. In 2000, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates and tightened liquidity, causing the internet bubble to burst, with the Nasdaq plummeting by 80%, leading to the bankruptcy of a host of story-telling companies, mirroring the crypto ICO bubble from enthusiasm to collapse, with rhythm, human nature, and outcomes being identical.
Real Industry Case
In 2017, various ICO projects were rampant; many projects had even fake office addresses but still raised hundreds of millions. Additionally, various public chain concepts were all the rage at that time, boasting "millions of TPS, global ecology," with bull markets exploding multiple times and bear markets dropping to zero, now completely forgotten.
Value and Market Laws
This cycle began to see people paying attention to team backgrounds, track concepts, and community heat, but still disregarded real revenue and grounding progress, fundamentally remaining more about narrative hype than fundamentals.
The market entered a mode of comprehensive rises and falls; the bull market lifted all boats, while bear markets brought everything down, with no safe haven assets.
Regulation shifted from a completely laissez-faire approach to active management and targeted rectification; for the first time, the industry felt: the era of barbaric growth was coming to an end.
Third Cycle of Bulls and Bears (2020-2025): Institutional Entry Transition Period
Benchmarking against the internet industry: 2003—2015 Bubble Cleansing and Value Reconstruction Maturity Period
Clearly Defined Time Frame
Bull market cycle: 2020 — November 2021
Bear market cycle: 2022 — December 2025
Core Market Characteristics
After the pandemic in 2020, global central banks loosened monetary policy, flooding the market with money; crypto assets fully stepped out of niche circles and were targeted by traditional finance. Large public companies, asset management firms, and overseas investment banks began to allocate Bitcoin, moving away from retail play; institutions formally took the stage, completely changing the force that influences the market.
After the approval of a U.S. spot BTC ETF, massive institutional capital continued to flow in, with firms like BlackRock and Fidelity diving in, directly pushing Bitcoin from being seen as a “speculative asset” to a “major asset class for allocation.”
However, peaks are always followed by declines; soon the Federal Reserve initiated the most aggressive interest rate hikes in decades to combat inflation, and market liquidity was instantly drained. Coupled with the Luna collapse and FTX disaster followed by a series of black swan events, industry confidence suffered a severe blow, leading to a deep market correction.
After this round of major reshuffling, market logic fundamentally changed. No longer did all coins rise and fall together; instead, there were clear distinctions: head assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum became less affected by downturns, backed by compliance, real ecosystems, and on-chain revenue, stabilizing their foundation, whereas purely speculative, non-business, non-community altcoins were directly abandoned by capital, gradually marginalized and dropped to zero.
Benchmarking against the internet from 2003 to 2015 is easily understood: after the internet bubble burst, all the rubbish companies went bust, leaving solid players like Google and Amazon with real business models that could steadily generate profits. Institutional capital made long-term commitments, and the market no longer relied on story-telling but focused on revenue, profits, and market shares, leading to gradually reduced volatility, with the concentration of leaders becoming increasingly high. The current crypto market is replicating this pathway thoroughly.
Real Industry Case
MicroStrategy has consistently increased its Bitcoin holdings counter to the trends, not panicking during bear markets, nor being overly exuberant in bull markets, treating Bitcoin as a core reserve asset, weathering several rounds of bulls and bears; in contrast, many small exchanges and altcoin projects that thrived off speculation back in the day couldn't withstand the liquidity tide from 2022 to 2025, either collapsing or running away, unable to endure the cycle's tests.
Value and Market Laws
This round has entered the dual game phase of value speculation: institutions are beginning to seriously look at on-chain data, real revenue, compliance qualifications, and user retention, no longer blindly chasing trends; retail investors still maintain speculative habits, but some have started to learn to differentiate the good from the bad, no longer rushing to invest in vaporware.
The stratification in the market is becoming increasingly evident; top performers keep getting stronger while rubbish assets are gradually getting cleared out, with the extremes of market fluctuations converging.
A global compliance framework is accelerating implementation, with legislations, regulatory classifications, and licensing systems being rolled out, compliance is no longer a bonus but the baseline for whether a project can survive.
2026—2029 Medium to Long-Term Trend Inference: Mature Long Bull Market Era
Benchmarking against the internet industry: 2016 onwards value realization period for dominant players.
Cycle Positioning
2026—2027: Post-bubble cleansing consolidation and phased accumulation window.
2028—2029: Halving cycle plus compliance and fundamentals resonance, starting an institutional long bull market.
Core Trend Inference
The next three years are a crucial phase in which the crypto space moves from "transition" to "maturity," never returning to the era of effortlessly becoming rich through altcoin investment.
The proportion of institutional capital will continue to rise, gradually becoming the absolute controlling force in the market; many retail investors who only know how to chase and sell highs, holding fantasies of wealth, will be gradually eliminated from the market, leaving those who will have to accept a long-term value allocation mindset.
The industry's valuation logic will be completely rewritten; in the future, story-telling and painting big pictures will be meaningless, as capital will only recognize real cash flow, compliance qualifications, grounded ecosystems, and on-chain real users. Global regulatory rules will gradually unify, messy small projects and unlicensed platforms will slowly be cleared out of the market.
RWA (Real World Asset) tokenization, compliant global payments, and institutional-level on-chain finance will no longer just be concepts that are talked about; they will be real businesses with revenue and institutions participating in the track. The market will undergo extreme stratification, with the vast majority of capital flocking to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a few top compliant assets, while smaller altcoins will find no opportunity for overall inflation, only slowly declining and becoming neglected.
Market fluctuations will also become milder, no longer resembling the spikes of dozens of points in a day as seen in the earlier years, approaching the stable trends of traditional stock markets, completely shedding casino-like attributes and evolving into a serious major asset allocation market.
The key for ordinary people is to seize the bottom-building window from 2026 to 2027; it’s not about guessing the lowest point, nor about going all in, but about gradually accumulating in phases, buying more as prices drop, not chasing highs, and not leveraging.
This "gradual accumulation in bear markets and cashing out in bull markets" long-term layout method has been made into a publicly tracked experiment: 2029 Long Bull Spot Accumulation Laboratory (qinglan.org/niu), fully transparent and verifiable, allowing ordinary people to reference and replicate directly without having to figure out the timing themselves.
Implications for Ordinary Investors
You must discard the fantasy of getting rich overnight as early as possible; the industry has entered a stage of value differentiation. Don’t touch altcoins that only tell stories, lack compliance, and have no real business—they just waste your time while losing your principal;
Asset allocation should gravitate toward top-tier assets, treating Bitcoin as a core reserve; have a small allocation to a few mainstream assets with ecosystems and compliance, and resolutely do not participate in obscure small coins or new concept vaporware;
From now until 2027 is a rare low-position accumulation window; don't wait until the bull market starts to chase high prices—instead, invest gradually and hold patiently, minimizing frequent short-term trades;
Always maintain the bottom line of compliance and risk control, only choose reliable and regulated platforms, and stay away from non-compliant, unendorsed funds and shady projects; preserving your principal is ten times more important than making quick profits.
Source of Information
Historical materials on global modern technology bubbles, Nasdaq and S&P valuation and cycle data over a century;
Yearly market bull and bear cycle reviews, on-chain market cap structure, and capital flow statistics;
Quarterly and yearly macro and track research reports from leading industry research institutions;
Public regulatory documents from the U.S. SEC, CFTC, and announcements of legislation related to digital assets;
Public holdings of large international listed companies and historical reviews of global monetary policy;
Internal cycle tracking by the Market Research Department of Qinglan Crypto Classroom, industry on-site research, and empirical statistical data.
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