A few thoughts: although I believe that bitcoin cycles are still in existence (until proven otherwise), bitcoin's market since March-April 2024 seems to be kind of chaotic.
I am not sure what is the reason for this.
Oh gawd.. what else is new?
1) Bitcoin went through a potentially deflated blow-off top in 2021 - whether the deflated nature of such blow-off top was from the China bans mining circumstances or whatever,
2) Somewhat unprecedentedly, Bitcoin corrected way the fuck below the 200-WMA which might have had been partially caused by various frauds in the space related to rehypothecating BTC from various entities and potential contagion (including Terra/Luna, 3AC, Celsius, Voyager, Blockfi, FTX/Alameda, Genesis/Grayscale/Gemini and likely some others).. So in some sense, BTC prices overly were depressed below the 200-WMA for much of 16-ish months from June 2022 until October-ish 2023.
** **Part of the reason that I chose October 2023 as the end of the period that BTC was overly depressed is because the BTC spot price was still below the 200-WMA by the time it started to pump at that October 2023 time.3) In mid-to-late October 2023, BTC prices started to pump largely due to either an anticipation of pending BTC spot ETF approvals or insiders (or speculators who felt good about BTC) putting a decent amount of ongoing buying pressure on BTC that pretty much lasted through the January 10th ETF approval, and such upward price pressures continued through our current local BTC price peak (ATH) in mid March (again prehalving by the way).
So yeah, quite a lot of had a pre-halvening run-up of BTC prices between October 2023 and March 2024 (right around 3x and corrected back down to 2-2.5x-ish).. so both what else is new in regards to strange BTC price dynamics, but also who knows what chicanery might still be going on behind the scenes (so not exactly new, but still not outside of bitcoin's history to be having chicanery going on behind the scenes).
One possibility is that large entities induce volatility to accumulate.
Another possibility is that some large 2010-2011 holders are selling, albeit this is contradicted by the fact that large whales are, apparently, buying, not selling.
Could be ongoing fake coins, too... which is dangerous from the peeps doing it, even if they might have a certain amount of access to infinite money printing (maybe not exactly direct, but close enough).
Why this seems paradoxical to me: EVERYBODY are reported as buying, but the price is flat to slightly down.
Who is selling?
Space aliens, AI or Rothschilds (aka super big money)?
Like...why we suddenly lost 6% today with no known news and S&P being at least not much negative (Dow is even positive for the day)?
I am not going to proclaim to know the answers - and I would not rule out fake coin influences that may or may not end up blowing up on some folks that may be able to receive a bailout.
On the other hand, it could well be that BTC price moves are merely within acceptable margins in which there frequently are going to be pauses and attempts to keep dee cornz down that sooner or later are not going to work anymore, yet in the mean time, there still are some weak hands that are able to be shaken along the way, too.