Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow.
Though those four words may not immediately mean anything to you, those four phases of a cycle have revolutionised your entire life. You may not realise it, but you benefit from them every single day, you most likely used that cycle thousands or millions of times today.
First invented almost 150 years ago, the four stroke internal combustion engine can confidently stake a claim to being the most important invention in personal freedom in the past 2 centuries.
Before the internal combustion engine, your area of travel was broadly limited to either how far you could walk in a day, or travel by horse, or to destinations accessible by train. In 2018 a friend and I drove coast to coast America from Southern Florida to Los Angeles. It took us 10 days and included several days off the road and limited travel time to a few hours per day. Before the invention of the internal combustion engine, that fastest that could have been done would have been three to four weeks of flat out travel.
Perhaps it’s just serendipitous that revolutionary freedom granting technologies tend to find themselves operating on four phase cycles like this.
Bitcoin’s 4 Year Engine
By now, it is broadly understood that bitcoin operates on 4 year cycles. The exact reason for that is not entirely known. Some of it is by possibly design of the code, some of it may be driven by US election cycles, some of it may just be human nature, and some of it may be a belief in the four phase cycle – which encourages self reinforcing behaviour.
Nonetheless, the cycles have played out broadly every four years since Bitcoin’s launch in 2009. With some small poetic licence, we can reasonably label these cycle phases similarly to those of the internal combustion engine.
Suck
This phase of the cycle begins when the engine is fully empty.
In Bitcoin it is when all hype and enthusiasm has fully exited the market, most likely many fair weather holders have exited and media outlets declared the whole asset class to be dead.
The new cycle starts again with the engine drawing in fuel and air mixture. In Bitcoin this represents a turning from the cycle bottom and a turn in investor sentiment. Small whispers of the future begin and some cautious souls begin to re-enter the market, bringing in new investors and new capital. Quiet shoots of optimism start to timidly raise their heads in the market and prices seem to slowly begin ticking upwards as confidence returns to the market at a snail’s pace.
Squeeze
This phase of the cycle compresses the fuel mixture in the engine cylinder.
In Bitcoin, this analogy is perhaps the most apt. The second phase of the four year cycle is typically where the “Halving” occurs and the amount of new bitcoin mined every day is halved.
This supply shock compresses the amount of bitcoin available to the market.
If demand has been stable or rising, then the reduction of supply sets the cycle up for a situation in which the equilibrium is forced to adjust in one way only. The laws of supply and demand dictate that if demand is constant or rising and supply is cut, price must be forced higher.
Bang
This phase of the cycle is the loud and explosive realisation of power in the system, in an instantaneous flash.
In Bitcoin, this would be what is often also called the “blow off top.” The point where maximum hysteria has been compressed in the market and bitcoin price explodes upwards in a rapid frenzy. Prices likely climb by several percent, for days on end. Prices soar higher and higher as the maximum energy in the system is realised fully unleashed in a rapid flurry.
This is when Uber drivers and your uncle start telling you about their Bitcoin portfolio, and asking what the next Bitcoin is. Where mainstream headlines scream new all-time highs, institutions launch glossy Bitcoin products, and friends who mocked you three years ago ask how to buy in.
Blow
The final phase of the cycle is the piston being thrown downwards from the power of the explosion and all of the ultra heated air being vented out of the engine.
In Bitcoin, this plays out as the post peak collapse and slump. Prices topped during the bang phase and many people got burned. Everyone who swore Bitcoin was their ‘forever hold’ sells to buy an overpriced apartment or some AI stocks, and the market obliges by cratering again. All of the hot air exits the market and the engine is once again empty. The media gloat once again that Bitcoin is dead and major investors sell off or distance themselves.
The piston swings around the lowest part of the cycle, and begins once again to rise right into the suck phase once more.
Those of us that survived the onslaught take a quick stock check and reload our rifles.
Future Cycles
Whilst these cycles have played out in a broadly timely fashion since Bitcoin’s inception, every cycle has people suggesting that the cycle is broken and won’t play out this time. Others posit that the cycle might play out over a longer timeframe.
Evidence would suggest that the cycles are getting both more moderate and longer in their phases. Institutional adoption of Bitcoin and large developments such as the ETFs would seem to substantiate that idea. Large funds rebalance often to meet their allocation targets and that would entail selling during price rises and buying during dips, acting as a stabilising buffer on the swings in the cycle.
Ultimately, the only way to know if we are in a cycle, and where we are currently in the cycle if so, is through the lens of hindsight.
At time of writing in late August 2025, one might speculate that we are late in the squeeze cycle and heading into the bang cycle in the coming 3-12 months.
All I can say with confidence is that when the bang and blow phases come, people will declare Bitcoin dead again, fair weather friends will leave, and prices will crater – bottoming much higher than in previous cycles.
The Bitcoin network will continue to produce new blocks every 10 minutes, and I will continue to hold an irresponsible amount of bitcoin.
And in the wise words of a late 80’s Scottish pop song.
The needle returns to the start of the song
And we all sing along like before— Del Amitri