[Digital Today reporter Jinju Hong (홍진주)] A long-cycle analysis says Bitcoin (BTC) was repeatedly judged to be “finished” after major black swan shocks such as the Mt Gox hack, China regulation, the Terra and FTX collapses and geopolitical clashes, but rebounded each time and went on to set new highs.

On May 20 local time, blockchain media outlet The Crypto Basic reported that market analyst Mikybull divided the 2009-2026 period into seven major cycles and summarised Bitcoin’s plunge-and-recovery patterns. The core message was that each time major negative news returned, the “BTC is dead” narrative strengthened, but it ultimately served as a precursor to the next upswing.

The first major cycle ran from October 2009 to June 2011. Bitcoin surged about 3,989-fold to $31.91 from $0.0008. This period included the formation of Bitcoin’s first market price and its reaching parity with the dollar in February 2011. But a security incident at Mt Gox, which accounted for about 70 percent of trading volume at the time, shook the market sharply. The attacker flooded the market with large fake sell orders, and the price plunged to $0.01 from the $17 level. About 2,000 BTC was stolen in the process, and Bitcoin later fell 93 percent to around $2.

In the second cycle from November 2011 to November 2013, Bitcoin rose to $1,127 from about $2, posting a gain of more than 50,000 percent. The first halving in January 2012 and the Cyprus financial crisis stimulated demand, but after Chinese authorities announced trading restrictions in late 2013, a drop of 87 percent followed and the “Bitcoin doomsday” view spread again.

In the third cycle from August 2015 to December 2017, Bitcoin rose to $19,665 from $185. It shook off the aftermath of the Mt Gox collapse, and the second halving in July 2016 added momentum. At the same time, a broader crypto market ICO boom emerged, with hundreds of projects raising funds.

But as regulatory pressure intensified, the bubble burst. Fraud, hacks and fund outflows deepened the downturn, and in 2018 Facebook, Google and Twitter banned cryptocurrency advertising. With tighter regulation in China and South Korea also overlapping, Bitcoin fell to $3,200 by the end of 2018 from around $19,783 in December 2017. Total losses across the crypto market exceeded $700 billion.

In the fourth cycle that began after the 2018 low, institutional inflows began in earnest. Alongside the third halving in May 2020, participation by MicroStrategy (now Strategy), Tesla and El Salvador followed, lifting Bitcoin to $69,044 in November 2021. It then went through a correction, falling 77 percent again in a bear market.

The fifth cycle that started in November 2022 began with the Terra collapse and FTX bankruptcy. Terra’s collapse in May 2022 led to a chain of failures at firms such as Three Arrows Capital, Celsius and Voyager, and FTX’s collapse in November that year further heightened market anxiety. Bitcoin then rose 715 percent to $126,198 in October 2025. Approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs and the fourth halving supported the rebound.

But the uptrend wobbled again in October 2025. A plunge that analysts called the biggest liquidation event in crypto history pushed Bitcoin down to $101,500 from above $122,000. About 1.6 million traders were liquidated, and the liquidation total reached about $19.1 billion. Bitcoin later recovered some of the loss.

The most recent shock came in February 2026, when tensions rose among the United States, Israel and Iran. On Feb. 28, U.S. and Israeli attacks targeted Iran’s nuclear and military facilities and leadership figures including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, spreading fear selling across global markets. Bitcoin fell to $63,000 from $67,000, and the crypto market saw outflows of about $1.07 billion. Bitcoin has since recovered to $77,382.

The analysis emphasised that Bitcoin has survived repeated external shocks and that halving cycles, inflows of institutional money and demand for alternative assets have underpinned a long-term upward structure. It presented as a core conclusion that each time the market cried “collapse”, it instead repeatedly signalled the next bull run.