While writing Crypto Titans: How Trillions Were Made, and Billions Were Lost in the Crypto Markets, we noticed a recurring pattern: each cycle was defined by a distinct dominant narrative, which in turn demanded a different kind of promoter and attracted an entirely new class of believers.

Bitcoin has now completed five bull markets and is navigating its fifth bear market. What drove each successive rally was never the previous cycle's dominant force or its existing holders; it was always a new narrative, new promoters, and a new cohort of investors arriving for the first time.

That trajectory has followed a clear arc: from a fringe group of ideological early adopters to (mass) retail, to institutional capital. Which raises a legitimate question: has the circle now closed with the institutions as the last potential investors, or is there still a meaningful new class of holders waiting in the wings?

Retail has been largely absent this cycle. Does it matter? And if a sixth cycle is coming, which we believe it is, what drives it, and who is the marginal buyer?

Below, we map all five Bitcoin bull markets: the narratives, the primary drivers, the marginal buyers, and what each cycle revealed about where Bitcoin was heading next. The pattern that emerges is striking: unlike any prior cycle, the sixth may look less like a reinvention and more like a continuation, driven by the same forces and the same buyers that defined the fifth.

To see our full analysis of the sixth cycle's likely drivers and the single marginal buyer we think changes everything, read on.

Bitcoin (LHS, log) vs. Number of New Addresses (LHS, 1 year moving average)