Wall Street Took Over Crypto, But It Couldn’t Stop Bitcoin’s 4-Year Cycle
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| By Beth Canova Reviewed By: Dawn Pennington |
If I asked you to picture a crypto trader just a few years ago, you might have envisioned a guy in pajama pants.
Hunched over three glowing monitors at 3 a.m., convinced a coin named after a dog would make him a millionaire.
If that was your guess, you might have been pretty spot-on.
But these days, the face of crypto has changed. So has its outfits.
In May, I attended Consensus Miami, one of North America’s largest crypto conferences. There, I saw far more Armani suits than tracksuits.
Here’s how The Wall Street Journal covered the event:
Also present were far more lawmakers, regulators, and titans of TradFi — including execs from JPMorgan Chase (JPM, “B+”), Citigroup (C, “B”) and others — than ever before.
This maturation didn’t come out of nowhere.
It happened when Wall Street showed up … and stuck around.
That was a little unsettling for a lot of longtime crypto fans. After all, crypto was supposed to sit outside the traditional financial system.
But now, the circle has widened to include some of the world’s most respected institutions.
Related story: Standard Chartered Makes a Big Move into Bitcoin, Ethereum
Which should bring more legitimacy … and potentially more money … into the cryptoverse.
The Pajama Years
The pajama days were one long party.
And like many parties, things got a little out of hand.
In 2017, new coins launched almost daily. Buyers threw billions at projects that had little more than a website and a promise.
By 2021, people were paying millions of dollars for digital pictures of cartoon apes. A few months later, crypto exchanges were buying Super Bowl ads.
“Diamond hands” and “HODL” — crypto slang for “hold on for dear life” — became battle cries. Street cred went to whoever could hold through the toughest downturns.
It was a wild time. And for some, wildly profitable.
But most of it was pure speculation, or good timing.
And the coins that saw the biggest gains … had very little real utility or revenue to justify their prices.
Not only that, but crypto lacked the user protections most investors expected and relied on when judging investments.
It’s no wonder many likened those early crypto days to the Wild West. And why so many retail investors said away.
Then, in late 2022, FTX, one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world, collapsed almost overnight. It took billions in customer cash with it.
The party was over.
Crypto looked less like the future of money … and more like a casino that had lost its license.
But just when it seemed like crypto’s time was done, the adults entered the room.
Then the Suits Walked In
Their big moment came in January 2024. That’s when regulators approved the first spot Bitcoin (BTC, “B+”) ETFs — funds that hold actual Bitcoin and trade just like a stock.
Ethereum (ETH, “B+”) funds followed that summer.
Suddenly, anyone with a brokerage account could buy Bitcoin as easily as a share of Apple (AAPL, “B”).
And pensions, financial advisers, and wealth managers finally had a simple, regulated way in.
They Didn’t Just Ease In. They Piled In!
BlackRock’s (BLK, “B”) Bitcoin fund hit $80 billion in about a year. That’s the fastest any fund — not just a crypto fund — has ever reached that mark.
Coinbase (COIN, “D+”) and Robinhood (HOOD, “C”) went from scrappy upstarts to established giants that Wall Street watches every day.
Once the suits settled in, they looked past the memes and the junk coins. And they found real value in the technology underneath, and the assets that make it work.
Digital Dollars, Digital Bonds
The first thing that caught Wall Street’s eye was a different kind of coin: the stablecoin.
A stablecoin is a crypto token tied to a real-world asset, usually the U.S. dollar. Unlike Bitcoin, its price isn’t supposed to move.
One coin = one dollar.
For years, crypto traders used stablecoins as a parking spot. A way to lock in profits or sit out a crash without leaving crypto. And walking into a taxable event.
Wall Street saw something bigger — a way to move real dollars anywhere in the world, in seconds, at any hour.
To the established adults of finance, that was a trove of unrealized potential.
Cross-border payments in the traditional system were slow and cumbersome. And they could only happen during regular business hours.
Stablecoins Smoothed the Entire Process
It didn’t take long for the suits to try and make stablecoins a part of their strategy.
Washington made it official in July 2025 with the GENIUS Act, the first federal law for stablecoins. It outlines exactly what stablecoin issues are responsible for and how third parties can use them.
Related Story: Stablecoins Are Becoming Crypto’s Biggest Business
That was all it took!
TradFi institutions began to build out infrastructure and partner with existing crypto platforms to bring stablecoins online for Wall Street.
As of this writing, the stablecoin market has hit an impressive market cap of $280 billion, with a record high of about $323 billion.
Circle (CRCL, “D+”) — the company behind the second-largest stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC) — even trades on the New York Stock Exchange now.
That raised the next question: If these rails could carry dollars, what else could they carry?
The answer started with U.S. Treasurys.
Yes, the grownups in the room chose the safest investment in traditional finance to test their crypto expansion.
A normal Treasury purchase runs through brokers and banks on business days. And the bond and cash don’t officially swap until the next business day.
As a digital token, however, a Treasury can change hands at any hour — even on a Sunday night — in seconds.
Related Story: Wall Street Wants Tokenized Stocks. Some Companies Are Saying No
Once bonds were digitized and traded on the blockchain, they took off.
That market went from under $1 billion at the start of 2024 to more than $15 billion this year, with BlackRock and Circle leading the pack.
These aren’t memes or cartoon apes. They’re real dollars and real bonds, running on crypto’s rails.
And the demand isn’t coming from frat dudes in their pajamas anymore. It’s coming from some of the most well-established firms and banks on Wall Street.
Many of whom were highly skeptical of crypto just a few years ago.
Did Wall Street Kill the Cycle?
The result, so far, has been significant.
For years, crypto was difficult to access and complicated to trade.
Now, retail investors and institutions alike can buy a spot ETF through the brokerage account they’ve used for years. Some even support trading the coins themselves.
Banks that just a few years ago wouldn’t touch crypto with a 10-foot pole now use blockchains as settlement layers.
And clearer regulation — a critical step in creating future growth — is now a priority in the halls of Congress.
Put it all together, and it’s not hard to argue that the suits changed almost everything about crypto.
The Key Word There Is ‘Almost’
Because while the adults made sure the market matured, they didn’t change the most important thing about them: the cycles.
Bitcoin has always moved to a surprisingly steady beat, with its larger four-year cycle dominating smaller trends.
BTC peaked in late 2013, again in late 2017, and again in late 2021. Almost like clockwork.
Many tie that rhythm to Bitcoin’s “halving,” a built-in event about every four years that cuts the number of new coins being created in half. Everyday investors did the rest, piling in during the booms and rushing for the exits during the busts.
So when steady Wall Street money started pouring in through ETFs, a lot of people — us included — wondered if the old rhythm was gone for good.
Here’s What Actually Happened
Bitcoin hit an all-time high above $126,000 in October 2025 — almost exactly four years after its 2021 peak.
Then came the slump. By June of this year, it had fallen about 50%, down to $60,000.
Painful? Absolutely. But also right on schedule.
The suits did change one thing …
The Drop Was Gentler
In the 2018 and 2022 bear markets, Bitcoin lost roughly 84% and 78% of its value.
This time, it “only” lost about half.
That’s still steep volatility for the more traditional crowd. But by crypto standards, it’s been incredibly tame.
Here’s where things get interesting: The latest long-term low is in, and the next cycle has already begun.
My colleague Juan Villaverde’s Crypto Timing Model is designed to track these cycles. And raise the alarm when we’re about to shift from one to the next.
Those transitions — which happen at the cycle lows — represent the best buying opportunities for anyone who wants to jump into crypto.
And it’s been spot on in calling those bottoms for the past multi-year crypto cycles…
- On Dec. 12, 2018, the headlines said crypto was finished. But Juan told his readers it was time to buy. Three days later, Bitcoin hit its low … and ran 21X by the next peak.
- Then, on Sept. 27, 2022 — almost four years later — Juan told readers to prepare for the big bottom soon.
He couldn’t have known that one of the largest exchanges at the time, FTX, would collapse just two months later. But his model knew the bull market that had been running at the time should hit its deadline around that time.
Sure enough, Bitcoin bottomed on Nov. 21. From that low, it ran 8X to its next multi-year peak.
Now, he’s put out his latest call: June 25 was the latest 4-year cycle low.
From here, who knows how far Bitcoin will run this time.
But what we do know is that typically, select altcoins can beat BTC in the run to the next multi-year peak.
To hear directly from Juan which coins he believe will outperform in this cycle, I encourage you to catch up on his latest crypto briefing.
Why the Next Dip Is Good News
As I said, cycles start on the downbeat. That’s where we’re at right now.
Of course, a new cycle never means a smooth ride to the top. There are always a few gut-check drops along the way.
But early in a new cycle, those drops tend to create the best opportunities. They’re the market’s way of putting good assets on sale.
That’s how we’ve approached this whole up-and-down year. Through every swing of 2026, our crypto research and ratings have helped readers spot opportunities, and many have found gain after gain along the way.
In fact, Juan’s model shows that the next best buying opportunity for a while is almost here. He goes into more details in his briefing, so be sure to check it out.
So in the end, the suits have officially made themselves at home in crypto.
They put an end to some of the wildest parts of the market. But they also brought ETFs, digital dollars, tokenized bonds and payment rails for AI.
In the process, they made crypto bigger, sturdier and much harder to ignore.
The only question left is whether you’ll follow Wall Street and make from for crypto in your portfolio, as well.
If that answer is yes, click this link here and follow the instructions at the end.
Best,
Beth Canova
