James Son, chief market strategist at wealth management firm Wellington-Altus, has called time on cryptocurrency's most closely watched pattern: the four-year market cycle organized around the Bitcoin halving.

In an interview published on October 14, 2026, Son said the four-year cycle and the halving cycle are finished. According to the report's headline, the strategist sees an $86,000 breakout ahead for Bitcoin (BTC).

The halving cycle has long anchored crypto market analysis Bitcoin's halving is a pre-programmed event — occurring roughly every four years, or every 210,000 blocks — that cuts in half the reward miners receive for adding new blocks to the network. The most recent halving took place in April 2024 — the fourth in Bitcoin's history — reducing the block subsidy from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.

Under the four-year cycle theory, each halving has historically been followed by a period of significant price appreciation and a subsequent sharp correction, as observed after the halvings of 2012, 2016 and 2020. The framework has made the halving one of the most widely cited reference points for timing Bitcoin's bull and bear phases.

Son's remarks mark a notable break from the halving-centered framework that has dominated crypto market analysis for more than a decade. Because that framework has been so deeply embedded in market commentary, rejecting it draws a line between two things often conflated: the halving as a protocol event, fixed in Bitcoin's code and continuing regardless of market outcomes, and the halving as a forecasting model, which analysts can revise or retire. Son's call is an argument for the latter.

For readers weighing that call, the historical record is the benchmark: the 2012, 2016 and 2020 halvings were each followed by appreciation and then correction, so how the current market behaves relative to that pattern is the evidence on which the debate will turn. The protocol itself sets a fixed horizon for the dispute — under the 210,000-block schedule, the next halving is expected around 2028, when the subsidy would drop from 3.125 BTC to 1.5625 BTC.

This content was first published on COINOTAG.