Bitcoin’s cycle clock points to its final high by late October, will ETFs rewrite history?

With the 1,065-day post-harvest window approaching, Bitcoin prices will trade nearly $117,000 after the Federal Reserve decision on interest rates.

Yesterday, the Fed placed a short-term Bitcoin route at the policy intersection, marking the “final high” about 1,065 days after the previous cycle low, according to cycle marker Axios.

The test window runs from late September to early October. The market then trades on Thanksgiving with flow, dollar, and rate dynamics that allow the previous cycle to expand the topping process combined with a drawdown of 40-60%, according to Axios.

Spot ETF demand is the first lever to watch, as it turns the cycle into a flow problem. According to Coinshares Latest weekly fund flow updates, US spot Bitcoin ETF saw new net inflows measured in billions of dollars from late August to early September, while Sosovalue tracked the mid-September multi-session inflow streak on September 15th at around $260 million in one-day print.

These numbers are calculated at approximately 3.125 bitcoins per day, in contrast to the post-harning issuance of approximately 452 bitcoins per day. When ETF demand for days absorbs thousands of bitcoins a week, the market’s ability to distribute inventory at high prices narrows, and the topping process is lengthened to plateaus rather than a single peak.

The macro condition sets the second lever.

This month, the euro touched on a four-year high against the dollar as expectations increased, but the front-end Treasury yields eased to the meeting.

Softer dollars lower global financial position and are often correlated with higher betas beyond risk assets. At the same time, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, domestic inflation rates have cooled from last year’s pace, with headline CPI in August being 2.5% year-on-year and 3.0% cores.

Policy results shape whether their tailbone persists or fades. For the remainder of 2025, the need for a quick reversal will be reduced in flashy language that emphasizes the need for a faster reversal to reduce dollar drift and extend the risk window.

Cuts highlighting the limited runway for inflation vigilance and further mitigation keep the fees sticky and reduce impulses. The uncut result was a low probability branch, but would have left the demand for ETFs to tighten their financial position into the quarter-end and carry more loads.

Mining Economics frames how deeply price movements are sent to the supply side. Hashrate index tracking shows that hashrates have hovered from 1.0 to 1.12 Zettahash per second to Zettahash for a second over the past few weeks.

The background is that it keeps the hash pris close to $53-55 per peta hash per day, and is roughly in line with Luxor’s spot reading this month. Hashpris scales roughly by inversely proportional to Bitcoin’s price and hashrate, so the Q4 band can be approximated by combining a price path with moderate hashrate creep as new rigs activate. The fees remain a component of the current lull, so the price brings most of the signal into minor cash flow.

A simple baseline clarifies the input that supplies scenario bands throughout Thanksgiving on November 27th.

With these inputs, the grid below ranges price and minor hashprice ranges in late November, beyond policy tone and ETF flow states. These are bands rather than point targets, designed to reflect the way cut tones and net flows propagate to prices and miners’ revenues under low conditions and modest hashrate growth.

The layout of the cycle clock is important as to how those bands are interpreted.

Axios frames ahead of the “final highs” occurring near the 1,065-day mark and moves to a drawdown that is less severe in the ETF era than in the previous cycle. This will add a second read-through to investors watching tapes in early October.

My own analysis was flagged on November 1st as a potential date for cycle peaks based on previous cycle peaks that grew from half the previous day about 100 days.

However, if the window provides high demand and ETF demand, the result could be a round top with shallow retracement.

As the window passes without a new high and the flows are mixed, the market moves towards the central cell of the grid, with prices oscillated under the previous peak, while the hashprice is constrained by a gradual increase in hashrate.

Policy tones color the flow of data almost immediately. With each breakdown of the meeting route for Business Insider, Dubu’s cuts are converted into a simpler dollar background and a steeper risk appetite curve. This draws historically progressive demand into stocks and crypto, but Hawkish’s cut narrows the curve and places more weight on the singular flow.

Non-cut results were testing the lower bands within the table as they tended to remove the impulse of short-term ease and solidify the dollar. According to BLS figures, CPI profiles reduce the need for restrictive surprises, but the chair’s emphasis on data reliance allows the chairman to maintain uncertainty of the rate path in the foreground, even if the first cut arrives.

ETF Flow Streak is the cleanest high frequency metric for monitoring against the background of this policy. Coinshares weekly data provides size and regional composition, and Sosovalue’s daily aggregation maps whether post-presentation sessions extend or fade bids.

It’s easy to convert these numbers into supply absorption

From $115,000 to $120,000 per Bitcoin, the net inflow of $1 billion equals about 8,300-8,700 Bitcoin. A weekly net inflow of $1.5-2.5 billion indicates 13,000-21,000 Bitcoin, or about 4-7 issues per week.

A sustained ratio of more than one will build a structural cushion below where the left tail of the top grid cell can be compressed, even with moderate spills within a few days, reducing the achieved volatility.

Minor balance sheets change from trailing indicators to stress indicators when trading low-price bands. With difficult conditions close to the records and electricity costs of some operators, the price drop combination is $95,000, and a steady hashrate pushes the hashprice to a low of 40 seconds per day.

Although the company-level thresholds vary, that level typically resumes hedge activity and delayed CAPEX rather than a wholesale shutdown. According to the hashrate index update for public miner extensions, 3-7% hashrate creep is an assumption of reasonable behavior in the table above, as the pipeline still has additional capacity remaining.

Throughout Thanksgiving, the story anchors remain the same.

The market is weighing either the initial policy cuts that shape the dollar and front-end rates, the net demand for ETFs that absorb or release supply compared to the daily issuance of 452 Bitcoin, and the 1,065-day cycle markers that Axios claims to historically line up with the final high and subsequent drawdowns.

The windows will fall from late September to early October. After that, attention shifts to the flow after decision and whether macro conditions check or reject the cycle script.

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