Fidelity Thinks Bitcoin May Be Leaving Its 80% Crashes Behind
Constancy Digital Belongings argues Bitcoin’s market construction has shifted sufficient that the acquainted four-year boom-bust sample and the brutal 80% drawdowns that always adopted, could not be the default final result.
In a Feb. 24 analysis word titled “Is Bitcoin’s 4-12 months Cycle Over?” analysis analyst Zack Wainwright frames the decision round a easy remark: Bitcoin is now a really different-sized asset with a really completely different purchaser base. Constancy pegs Bitcoin’s market cap at an all-time excessive of roughly $2.5 trillion as of October 2025, alongside indicators of deeper liquidity and a steadier volatility regime than prior cycles.
“As bitcoin matures, worth conduct is diverging from earlier cycles. Volatility lowering at the same time as worth reached new highs above $126,000.”
Bitcoin Demand Is Being Re-Formed
Constancy’s volatility argument leans on one-year realized volatility and the way it behaved round cycle peaks. In prior cycles, the sample was broadly constant: volatility would compress into new lows forward of a serious upside transfer towards new highs, then increase because the cycle overheated.
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This time, Constancy says the compression is arriving sooner after the height. The word factors to 17 new all-time lows in one-year realized volatility logged in January 2026—simply months after Bitcoin notched recent all-time highs in October 2025—calling it a significant divergence from the cadence of earlier cycles. The staff attributes a part of that dampening to scale: Bitcoin is about twice the market cap it was on the 2021 peak, roughly 10x 2017’s peak, and over 200x 2013’s.
The second pillar is who’s holding provide, and the way sticky that demand seems. Constancy highlights a cohort of 49 public firms holding greater than 1,000 BTC every, with mixed holdings above 1 million BTC, over 5% of circulating provide. It additionally notes that, since Q1 2020, this group elevated holdings quarter-over-quarter in each quarter besides Q2 2022, when Tesla bought a big portion of its place.
On the ETF aspect, Constancy writes that US spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in January 2024 and collectively held almost 1.3 million BTC as of Jan. 30, 2026, about 6.4% of circulating provide. The word provides that the class chief surpassed $75 billion in belongings underneath administration in underneath two years, contrasting that tempo with gold’s flagship ETF, GLD, which took almost seven years to achieve the identical milestone.
Collectively, Constancy says public firms and ETFs now maintain almost 12% of circulating provide, with a lot of the progress coming after 2023—a requirement shift the staff views as structurally vital for drawdowns.
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Constancy additionally argues the cycle has appeared “notably secure” throughout a number of on-chain and issuance-linked measures. Utilizing a profit-window framework, when addresses in revenue first exceed 95% by means of the final time they continue to be above 95%, the word says MVRV has stayed roughly round two occasions realized worth by means of a lot of the bull market, reasonably than spiking towards four-to-six occasions as in earlier cycles.
The report flags a counterfactual for example the purpose: if market cap reached 4 occasions realized cap on this cycle, it could suggest roughly a $4.5 trillion market cap and about $225,000 per BTC as of Feb. 2, 2026. It additionally notes the Puell A number of has stayed shut to 1, signaling each day issuance worth hasn’t meaningfully deviated from its one-year common.
Constancy’s new “Revenue to Volatility Ratio” is the place the drawdown declare turns into express. The staff units 0.01 as a stability line and says the ratio has stayed above 0.015 since late 2023, the longest sustained interval at these ranges in Bitcoin’s historical past. Even with a February 2026 downturn that pushed BTC beneath $70,000, the ratio remained above the brink.
“A measurement above 0.01 could be thought of very secure. Conversely, a measurement beneath 0.01 ought to be considered with warning.”
The implication, Constancy suggests, isn’t that volatility disappears—however that the basic cycle-ending wipeouts could also be much less seemingly in a market more and more formed by institutional channels and a bigger, extra liquid base. If that regime holds, the subsequent section might look much less like a blow-off high and extra like a slower, extra methodical repricing, greater over time, however with fewer cliff-edge resets.
At press time, BTC traded at $66,677.
Featured picture created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
