The End of the 4-Year Bitcoin Cycle — Why the BTC "Capital Cycle" is Next w/ Alex Leishman | BMP Ep 15

**Alex Leishman** (0:00)
Maybe there's some new kind of cycle happening, where Bitcoin actually is serving as the store of value. And what we're going to see is, instead of these just random four-year Bitcoin cycles, due to supply, maybe there's these business cycles we're going to see more, where Bitcoin has been this place, people are parking wealth. And then when they want to start doing things from it, we see cycles here. And so I think that's like an elephant in the room. And I think maybe it's part of Bitcoin maturing. Bitcoin, the capital will cycle back, right? And so I think the question is like, when is that going to happen?

**Brandon Green** (0:36)
Hello and welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine Podcast. I'm your host Brandon Green. Today we have the Alex Leishman from River.
We had a fantastic conversation. We talked about all sorts of stuff. We talked about the differences between Bitcoin, not a bank, but Bitcoin banking and services, as well as what we're seeing in the Treasury company space and how that looks different and similar, and where Coinbase could be building in different directions than what a Bitcoinized future looks like, and so many other things. And honestly, Alex is one of the greatest entrepreneurs in our space. River's been crushing it, and it was good to just check in and enjoy a little bear market combo with him. So I think you're gonna love it. I learned a lot. And so without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Alex Leishman. Okay, welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine Podcast. I'm your host, Brandon Green. Today, we have the Alex Leishman from River. Alex, how you doing, man?

**Alex Leishman** (1:37)
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on.

**Brandon Green** (1:39)
Well, welcome to the show. We're sitting here, middle of June.
You know, we have to start with the market a little bit. So we've taken a nice little nosedive back, dunking under, you know, 60K. We thought about hitting 58K.
Things seem to be stabilizing now. Give us your outlook. Like, what have we seen so far? Is this just another cycle?
What are you noticing about the recent price action with Bitcoin?

**Alex Leishman** (2:10)
Well, we're definitely in a bear market.
And, you know, I remember the way we think about it. You know, there's sort of two ways we think about it. One is, how do we think about it for our clients? And then how do we think about it for ourselves? Internally, we've always run the company with the assumption that bear markets will follow bull markets. And so we've always sort of saved money during the bull markets so that we're very comfortable in the bear markets. So internally, sort of, we were always prepared for this kind of thing. So we've got, you know, a treasure chest that we're deploying right now, like just building as fast as we can while the market's in a bear markets, so that when the bull market does come around, we have the best possible product we can have for the market or for our clients. I think that, you know, if I had to listen to my gut, summer is usually slow in Bitcoin. And so if I was betting, I would bet, hey, the market's going to be kind of slow for, at least through the summer. You know, if we start getting a turnaround, I wouldn't expect it until like around election time. But it's also possible, it extends, you know, it's not out of the world of possibility. If we're looking at, if we look at previous cycles that were in for another year or two of bear market. But at the same time, Bitcoin always kind of does what you don't expect. And, you know, the minute you make some prediction, it kind of makes you look stupid. So who really knows? It feels a little bit different than other bear markets.
There's a few interesting facts. From a regulatory perspective, things have never been better for Bitcoin. And I think, like, in the last year or two, sort of there was like this elephant in the room, which was the stars have never been aligned more for Bitcoin. Why isn't it doing better than it was, right? Another interesting fact is like the AI bubble, right? For a long time, there was no really compelling, generally-viewed, generally accepted tech trend that was going to transform the world, right? In like three or four years ago.
Now that's changed. We have this AI thing that's like on the order of magnitude or more of the Internet. And so that's sucking out a lot of capital from the system.
And when we have big IPOs coming up, we have the SpaceX IPO and then we have all of these AI IPOs. And so I think a lot of people have been pulling their capital out of Bitcoin and deploying it into things that they think are going to be very productive areas for their capital to grow. And so I think we're in some, maybe there's a new kind of cycle happening where Bitcoin actually is serving as the store of value. And what we're going to see is instead of these just sort of like random four year Bitcoin cycles due to supply, maybe there's these business cycles we're going to see more where Bitcoin has been this place, people are parking wealth. And then when they want to start doing things from it, we see cycles here. And so who really knows? But I think that's like an elephant in the room. And I think maybe it's part of Bitcoin maturing. Like Bitcoin, the capital will cycle back, right? And I think the question of like, when is that going to happen? Then there was lastly, I'll wrap it up. There was also a dynamic of a lot of early whales just selling, like kind of, I think 100k was a psychological number. Imagine you were an early whale, you were in your maybe your 20s or 30s when you were stacking sub $100, sub $10 Bitcoin.