Everyone who has been hanging out in crypto communities over the past few months has encountered it: the Benner Cycle. This nearly 150-year-old chart by a farmer named Samuel Benner is suddenly everywhere. And honestly? It’s fascinating to see a historical forecasting tool become a hot topic again—especially now, when the markets are so turbulent.

Benner developed his cycle after the financial crisis of 1873. He studied price patterns in agricultural commodities and published his book "Business Prophecies of the Future Ups and Downs in Prices" in 1875. The idea was actually simple: solar cycles influence harvests, harvests influence prices, and market movements can be derived from that. The chart distinguishes between panic years (Line A), boom phases for selling (Line B), and recession years for accumulating (Line C).

What makes the Benner cycle interesting: it is said to have predicted the Great Depression, World War II, the dot-com bubble, and even COVID-19 quite accurately—with only minor timing deviations. No wonder retail investors are digging it up again. Many shared it wildly in 2025 to support optimistic scenarios for the crypto market. The forecast was clear: 2025 should be a major peak, 2026 the time to sell.

But here’s where it gets complicated. In April 2025, Trump announced tariffs, and the markets reacted strongly. The crypto market fell from $2.64 trillion to $2.32 trillion. JPMorgan increased the recession probability to 60%, Goldman Sachs to 45%. Suddenly, reality no longer fit the Benner cycle—or at least not as neatly as some had hoped.

Experienced trader Peter Brandt was immediately critical: for him, the chart is more distraction than tool. You can’t go long or short based on it, so it’s rather useless for practical trading decisions. Understandable.

Still, some investors cling to it. They argue: markets don’t only work through numbers but through sentiment and conviction. And if enough people believe in the Benner cycle, it could become self-fulfilling. That’s psychologically interesting but also a bit circular.

Google Trends show that interest in this cycle peaked last year—a sign of growing demand for optimistic narratives amid economic uncertainty. My observation: people seek guidance when everything feels chaotic. The Benner cycle offers exactly that—a historical structure that promises meaning.

The question is: does it still work in a world that has changed so drastically? Modern agriculture looks different, financial markets are more complex, geopolitics more volatile. Whether old patterns still hold, we will see.