Binance’s Changpeng Zhao says bitcoin will ‘break’ the four-year cycle this year

Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao told CNBC on Friday he believes bitcoin will break its four year cycle this year because the U.S. and other countries have become crypto-friendly.

“If you are looking at today, tomorrow, on a daily basis, there’s no way I can predict” which way the price of bitcoin is going to go, the crypto exchange founder said in response to Squawk Box’s Andrew Ross Sorkin question over his forecast for BTC this year. “If you look at the five, ten year horizon, it's very easy to predict. We're going to go up.”

The CNBC host asked CZ if he agreed with Ark Invest CEO Cathie Woods, who last week forecasted bitcoin’s price between $300,00 and $1.5 million by 2030, while others who believe bitcoin is going to break all time highs this year. “I have very strong feelings that there will probably be a supercycle (this year),” he responded.

“Well, normally bitcoin follows four year cycles [...], but I think this year given the U.S. being so pro-crypto and every other country is kind of following, I do think we will see this. We will probably break the four year cycle,” said CZ, accepting this year the btc price would peak to new highs. Historically, bitcoin cycles are every four years anywhere between 14 to 18 months following the halving event. Next halving is not expected to occur until April 2028, a new all-time-high toward the end of the following year.

Zhao also spoke with CNBC of spending significant time advising policymakers on crypto frameworks, saying, “I also spend quite a lot, a lot of time talking with about a half, about a dozen governments about how to regulate crypto, how to regulate tokenization, how to do stablecoins.”

CZ had already told a panel on Thursday during a World Economic Forum 2026 Davos he was in talks with roughly a dozen countries about tokenizing their assets, although he did not mention specific nations or assets. He did, however, say the goal is to enable those countries to raise funds by offering small portions of state-owned assets to citizens or investors, similar to how some nations have sold stakes in national oil or telecom firms.

During the interview from Davos with Squawk Box, Zhao also pointed to what he sees as a broader political shift around digital assets, saying that the increasingly pro-crypto stance worldwide is “good for the crypto industry and good for America as well.”

Lastly, Zhao also spoke of his personal projects, saying he’s “still pretty busy,” and that things are “getting busier.” He’s been “working on this free education platform called Giggle Academy,” and also “worked with an investment team called YZi Labs.” Zhao added that he continues to mentor “a number of founders in the BNB Chain ecosystem space,” emphasizing that “we’re minority investors” and that he mainly supports them directly: “I just mentor them.