Bitcoin reached a four-month high of $82,262 on Thursday after breaking above a trading range that had held it between $60,000 and $70,000 since early June. It later pared gains and was down 2% at about $79,800 on Friday afternoon, although it remained near its highest level since May. The move followed a period in which investors had hoped Bitcoin would return to the October boom, when it climbed above $126,000. Bitwise’s director of research for Europe, André Dragosch, said investors have recently treated Bitcoin more as a store of value than as a risky technology stock. That shift came after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent disclosed a proposal to increase Treasury buybacks of long-dated bonds as yields surged. The measure has not yet been rolled out, but it fueled concerns about financial repression as the 30-year yield reached its highest level in nearly two decades late last month, while the Iran war kept inflation forecasts elevated. Dragosch said Bitcoin’s 90-day correlation with gold had approached a six-year high, contrasting with earlier-year trading patterns that more closely resembled a risk-on asset correlated with technology stocks. He wrote that Bitcoin has begun to look like an amplified version of gold as investors respond to currency-debasement risks. Dragosch also warned that the shift may not be positive for the broader market, noting that the last comparable correlation between Bitcoin and the dollar occurred in 2020, when central banks worldwide deployed stimulus and quantitative easing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some traders point to Bitcoin’s four-year cycle theory, which links bear-market lows and bull-market peaks to roughly four-year intervals. Fidelity’s fourth quarter crypto market outlook said the next bear-market bottom could occur around November, four years after the previous bottom in November 2022, if the theory holds. The theory is partly linked to Bitcoin’s halving, which reduces rewards paid to miners maintaining the blockchain. Alex Thorn, Galaxy’s head of firmwide research, wrote in a June report that historical analogies suggested a base-case bottom for the current drawdown between $40k and $46k sometime between now and Q4 2026, while stressing that this was not a price prediction. Chris Kuiper, vice president of research at Fidelity Digital Assets, said the four-year cycle does not necessarily imply a decline later this year because its timing is not exact. He said a long-term perspective and holding period had historically been most beneficial for investors.