Originally published at mrnasdog.com/research/bitcoin-4-year-cycle by MrNasdog.
I built this framework in 2019. It's how I bought Bitcoin near its bottoms — around $3,400 at the 2018–19 low, and again near $17,000 in 2023 — and caught the recovery each time. Here's the full mechanism, and how it reads where the price is heading.
The method: one price per half-year
Ignore the daily noise. I take one number for every six months — the median Bitcoin price for that half-year (H1 = January–June, H2 = July–December). The median is the middle price, so spikes and crashes don't distort it. One number per half-year, eight numbers per four-year cycle, and the noise disappears: what's left is the same shape, repeating.
The four steps
Every cycle moves through four phases, in the same order — and each phase is defined by what the price does:
- Quiet — price barely moves; it drifts almost flat for a stretch of half-years.
- Pump — price multiplies to the cycle's high in one or two half-years.
- Drop — price falls hard from the peak to the cycle low.
- Recover — price climbs off the low, building the base the next cycle starts from.
Three patterns
1. The same four steps, every cycle. Take Cycle 3 (2020–2023): Bitcoin drifted quietly through 2020, exploded up through 2021 to its peak, fell hard through 2022 to its low, then climbed back in 2023 — Quiet, Pump, Drop, Recover. Cycle 1 and Cycle 2 do the same, in the same order.
2. The wait shrinks, the climb stretches. The flat Quiet phase keeps getting shorter — 2 years in Cycle 1, 1.5 in Cycle 2, ~1 year in Cycles 3 and 4 — while the rising part (Pump + Recover) grows to match: roughly 1 → 1.5 → 2 → ~2.5 years. Less time drifting, more time going up.
3. Every bottom sits higher than the last climb's start. The lowest half-year of the Drop has never closed below where that cycle's Pump began. The floor keeps rising:
| Cycle | Pump base (last quiet) | Drop low | Held |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2013 H2 · $127 | 2015 H1 · $239 | 1.9× |
| 2 | 2017 H1 · $1,194 | 2019 H1 · $4,138 | 3.5× |
| 3 | 2020 H2 · $11,679 | 2022 H2 · $19,557 | 1.7× |
| 4 | 2024 H2 · $65,670 | 2026 H1 · $73,054 | 1.1× |
Where we are now (June 2026)
Cycle 4's pump base is $65,670 (2024 H2). The 2026 H1 median is $73,054 — above it, so the floor rule holds. Bitcoin's daily price dipped under $66,000 in June 2026, but the framework reads the half-year median, not the daily candle. With the Quiet phase compressed, the forward read is a recovery from here into 2027.
The MrNasdog Bitcoin Framework is my own original work, read from a daily Bitcoin price record kept since 2013. It shows how I think about Bitcoin — a personal method, not financial advice.
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