18 Months Post-Halving: Where We Stand
Happy Bitcoin Friday! — Oct. 17, 2025
18 Months Post-Halving: Where We Stand
Bitcoin market cycles have a rhythm of their own, but few truly recognize it until they’ve lived through more than one.
For years, I’ve emphasized a critical pattern: the market impacts of the Bitcoin halving don’t arrive on halving day.
Rather, they tend to materialize six to eighteen months later. That delayed echo is where sentiment often shifts, where the conviction gets tested, and where market narratives break or harden.
Well, here we are.
This weekend marks roughly 18 months since the April 19, 2024 halving, and in many ways, this cycle has already rewritten parts of the script.
New vs. Old Bitcoiners: Misreading the Halving
New Coiners
New Bitcoiners tend to dramatically underestimate the halving. They’ve heard of it, maybe even traded around it, but they haven’t felt what it does over time.
They mentally price in a supply cut, but they don’t internalize that Bitcoin’s behavior post-halving is often compounded by macro conditions, liquidity flows, and a rising tide of speculative reflexivity.
Old Coiners
Veteran Bitcoiners, on the other hand, rarely trade the halving itself. Instead, they trade the expectations of what newer participants will do around it.
Some think each halving will matter less as Bitcoin “matures” as others think it remains the dominant force behind the four-year cycle.
Oddly, both views can be right for different reasons, and both sides are often wrong in their attempts to front-run psychology.
A Unique Cycle: ETFs, Politics, Institutions
This cycle broke important new ground before the halving even happened. We witnessed:
US spot Bitcoin ETFs launching ahead of the halving
The rise of public and private Bitcoin treasury strategies
A surge in derivatives, structured products, and institutional tooling
Instead of waiting for the halving to kick things off, the market experienced an acceleration heading into it.
Liquidity was already pouring in.
Access was easier than ever.
Institutions weren’t just watching—they were scaling in with mandates.
In the past 18 months, we saw:
All-time highs cleared before the halving dust settled
Peaks near $125,000
Bitcoin holding a $2 trillion market cap across consecutive months
The psychological $100,000 barrier sliced through like it barely mattered
Bitcoin Dominance & the Altcoin Mirage
Despite all of this, one metric captures the broader reality of this market: Bitcoin dominance remains near 60%.
Strip out the top stablecoins?
It jumps closer to 65%.
Remove Ethereum?
We’re flirting with 80% dominance.
That leaves the so-called “altcoin market” — roughly $1 to $1.5 trillion — dispersed across thousands of tokens, most with no meaningful retail inflows and limited institutional demand at scale.
In euphoric phases, this fragmentation gets ignored. But when volatility strikes, the bottom drops out fast. Liquidations cascade. Volume evaporates.
Traders discover, the hard way, that speculative bets without network effect or real adoption don’t bounce—they vanish.
This is where Bitcoin’s moat becomes undeniable. Not just price. Scale. Liquidity. Uptime. Finality. Lindy.
No one wakes up to this difference until it costs them.
A Cycle Near Its Peak — But Not a Typical Ending
The traditional halving cycle says we’re somewhere near the cycle’s climax. Whether you follow on-chain indicators, four-year fractals, or macro correlation models, signals are flashing that we’re deep into the post-halving bull run window.
But this cycle isn’t a carbon copy.
There are new undercurrents:
Long-term institutional holders—public ETFs, corporations, sovereign entities
A higher structural price floor driven by persistent accumulation
Bitcoin integrated into macro portfolios alongside gold, equities, and real assets
Q4 2025 stands to be one of the most revealing quarters in Bitcoin’s history. Equities are volatile. Gold is rising. Fiat politics are unstable. And Bitcoin, rather than being a speculative outlier, is now a participant in the global monetary conversation.
The Halving Always Matters — Just Not How People Expect
Each halving cycle tests a different misunderstanding.
Newcomers underestimate it
Veterans misprice it
Markets assume it gets weaker
Reality shows it keeps adapting
The supply shock is never just about supply. It’s about time preference collapsing. It’s about monetary gravity exerting itself. It’s about who owns Bitcoin by the end of the cycle — not who traded it at the beginning.
This is why cycles still matter.
They don’t just reset price.
They reset the participant base.
The question isn’t whether the bull run is ending. The real question is what kind of market survives after it…
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Enjoy the weekend!
I am not an investment or financial advisor. All opinions expressed are mine alone. Read the full DISCLAIMER on the About page.
HODL on Garth.