People often tell me: "Bro, did you see Bitcoin hit $50,000? The US stock market isn't doing much, it seems like the crypto world is finally acting independently!" I always want to laugh—this is a typical surface-level view. What's the truth? The crypto market has never truly been independent; essentially, it is an "accelerator" and "magnifier" of traditional financial cycles. If you can't grasp this logic, you'll eventually get caught holding the bag.

To be clear: the bull and bear switches in the crypto market are fundamentally driven by the "credit cycle" of traditional finance. This cycle has two phases—loose and tight. During the loose phase, central banks print money and cut interest rates, market liquidity is abundant. Some funds flow into stocks, while others with high risk appetite move into assets like cryptocurrencies, causing both markets to rise together; during the tight phase, central banks raise interest rates and withdraw liquidity, making funds scarce. High-risk assets crash first, followed by the stock market falling into a bear market—neither can escape.

Looking at the real data makes this clear. From 2017 to now, the crypto market has completed two full bull-bear cycles, each perfectly aligned with traditional financial credit cycles. The 2017 bull market? It corresponds to the tail end of the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing from 2015 to 2018; the plunge in 2018? It coincided with the Fed's rate hikes; from 2020 to 2021, global central banks flooded the market to respond to the pandemic, and the crypto market surged again; in 2022, the market turned bearish as the Fed began aggressive rate hikes, and crypto collapsed. More intriguingly, the crypto market's bull-bear switches often lead the stock market by 3 to 6 months—for example, that in 2022.