The 2021 bull market was just so different from the prior ones, possibly starting a completely new phase for all of Crypto.

We usually try to simplify the markets with some very rigid rules, like the “4 year cycle“ Theory, of course it was not really proven wrong until now, but history tends to never be that easy. So it is just a question of time until that theory also gets proven wrong, as so many other already did. While looking through all the previous bull markets you may get confronted by a very distinctive bull run from all the others…

By that I mean the 2021 bull run, there are many many factors in this bull market that are either the opposite of what we saw in the previous bull market or they are just completely new factors.

For example, you can not look at Crypto the same way since some major institutions entered in 2021, we got MicroStrategy, but also Tesla and the Bitcoin Futures ETF later that year that obviously does not directly influence BTC prices, as it is not a Spot ETF, but for those big financial giants it is a good playing ground before actually entering Crypto. On top of that the countless regulations that we got worldwide (maybe not so much in the US).

But apart from that, there is also a simple chart that shows how much actually changed:

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Bitcoin Supply available to trade chart, from MitchellHODL

Here we can see how in all the prior bull markets we had the BTC on exchanges just increasing, as people entering Crypto directly bought there due to simplicity. This was different this 2021 bull run, here even 2020 the BTC balance on exchanges has been rapidly declining and exchanges could not even stock up in a bear market.

Clearly showing how the immense scarcity of the BTC supply will be a bigger and bigger topic that could shape whole bull markets with just one Supply Shock.