Bitcoin 4 Year Cycle Explained (BEST Time To Buy)

**Peter Taff** (0:00)
What is the Bitcoin four-year cycle, and where is Bitcoin most likely to bottom out? The answer to these two questions is the difference between stacking generational wealth or watching your portfolio get cut in half for the next 12 to 18 months. Timing these entry points for your portfolio is not optional. You get these entry points wrong, that could be the end of your investing career. But if you get it right, that could change everything. So let's break down what the four-year cycle for Bitcoin actually is with zero flow. Looking at this Bitcoin four-year chart should make things very, very simple. Each one of these seasons is marked in very clear distinction. Now each one of these cycles has resulted in a massive gain in Bitcoin's price, ran up by 52,280%.
The second cycle from March 14th up to 2017 gave gains of 12,800%.
The run up from 2017 up to 2021 provided gains of 1,900%, and our recent bull market ran the market up by another 638%.
A clear pattern of growth, but how to identify where you are at in this cycle means the difference between massive gains and massive pain. The drawdowns for Bitcoin follow each cycle high, and the first drawdown resulted in a loss of 86%.
Secondary loss resulted in an 83% drawdown. The 21 highs to the lows of 2022 ended up with a 75% drawdown, and it's to be determined exactly how far down Bitcoin's price is likely to fall in this current scenario. But in this video, I'm actually giving you my best assessment of where those local lows should be and how much of a drawdown we're actually looking at. Now, the four-year cycle is basically separated into four different phases. Phase one, you have accumulation. Phase two runs into bullish expansion zone. Phase three is the parabolic market top, the FOMO season where everyone's chasing green candles. And phase four, where we are currently located, is the bearish contraction phase. These are where you find the ugly 70%, 80% drawdowns in Bitcoin's past, but there is something, a key variable, that happened in the last bull market that I'm going to be making very clear in this video as well that might actually slightly adjust how this bear market's going to act. One of the brightest minds in Bitcoin's four-year cycle theory, and one of the best analysts out there in crypto, is Benjamin Cowen. He came out with this highlight about the likelihood of a Federal Reserve interest rate hike coming up in 2026 in September. He says, we're already looking at a two-thirds chance that the Federal Reserve raises interest rates in September of 2026
This is all in response to the latest data from 10-year yields spiking and heading back to that 5% mark. Long-end rates will likely continue to rise, forcing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates before the end of the year. Now keep that data point in mind as we work through this to understand where the likely point where Bitcoin bottoms out actually is going to be. Right now where Bitcoin sits, we are falling after the post bull market highs at around $126,000.
So far, we've seen a price decline of about 54%.
History and the current midterm year pattern of elections both point towards quarter four of 2026 being that final flush out low. And most analysts are looking at the September to October timeframe for that final capitulation point for Bitcoin to be. Interestingly enough, that time frame also lines up with the next expected Federal Reserve interest rate meeting, which is slated to happen on September 16th of 2026 Right now, odds are favoring an interest rate hike around 54%.
But this could change how Bitcoin has acted after these Federal Reserve decisions is something that's actually going to be throwing a lot of analysts for a loop. And here's why.
Each reaction to Bitcoin price after the Federal Reserve meeting has resulted in a drop to Bitcoin's price since July of 2025 But something very key changed at the beginning of 2026
As you can see laid out simply, even in a bull market year with interest rate cuts, Bitcoin decided to take dumps through the remainder of 2025, falling all the way down to where we eventually broke down into what is near Bitcoin's bottom lows. But since the February FOMC meeting, Bitcoins actually began to rally after each one of these Federal Reserve decisions. Now the February meeting caused that capitulation candle to hit $59,000, but since then, we've actually seen Bitcoin start to locally bounce after each one of these FOMCs. But since then, we're starting to see Bitcoin show resilience after the FOMC rather than a generalized massive drawdown. This data is telling me that the four-year cycle is largely still in control, regardless of the FOMC decisions. And two key data points about the four-year cycle we must take into consideration. Bitcoin in the four-year cycle is largely driven by the halving process, where the amount of Bitcoin issued for each block mined is cut in half. Each yellow vertical line on this chart represents the Bitcoin halving on the chart. The Bitcoin halving has consistently happened during the bullish expansion phase, phase two. This is where media starts waking up. This is where the old school kind of fair weather fans start waking up to crypto once again. A difference that we had in the last bull market is that we actually accomplished new all-time highs for Bitcoin before the halving even took place. What really drove the Bitcoin price to break these new all-time highs ahead of schedule was the ETFs being issued, spot ETFs becoming available for US institutional clients. This is an institutionally controlled market now. This is no longer retail drive in the boat of a $1.2 trillion asset class. Taking that key data point into consideration, massive institutions moving in rather than the traditional Bitcoin whales and the general growth of the network, and the timeframe that it takes to go to your bear market lows from each cycle top is something that we have to keep in mind. The original 2013 cycle top to cycle low of 2015 took 413 days to accomplish. The 2018 to 2019 lows took a total of 427 days to accomplish. 2021 high to the lows of 22 took again 427 days to hit. So where we're sitting right now, instead of a $100 billion, $200 billion market cap, just like the lows of 2022, we're out, we're now at a $1.2 to $1.3 trillion market cap. It's a much bigger boat to move up or down. Now many, many analysts are expecting the drawdown, the diminished losses on Bitcoin to continue, which generally should bring Bitcoin down from its local high to low of around 70% drawdown into the $37,000 to $45,000 range. But what's happening on the undercurrent is the bear market drawdown in terms of money flow is weaker than any bear market we've seen before. The red money flow in Bitcoin's bear market lows is getting weaker and weaker. So this is something I'm taking into account. So measuring from the recent high at $126,000 to where we're at, if you're watching this video in August, we're now 308 days from that recent high. Now if history rhymes for Bitcoin's four-year cycle from each high to low, this would land Bitcoin's next moment of hitting those all-time lows to generally being around 400 days from that local peak. And that, my friends, would bring you to the October and November time frame of 2026, where that final flush out should, if history repeats itself, occur. I've been trading and studying four-year cycle for a vast majority of my crypto career, and the main thing that's making me concerned that we actually might be looking at the bottom in our current scenario is the lack of depth of this red money flow in our current bear market. Bitcoin has recently had all the reasons in the world to make that final flush out down with cold card wallet hacks and war breaking out in the Middle East. All these bad news headlines keep coming out, and yet institutional interest in Bitcoin and the structural integrity of this chart is still holding up rather bullishly. Broadly speaking about the Bitcoin four-year cycle, I absolutely pay respect to the 1,400 days, nearly to the T, each high to high Bitcoin takes. This has been a consistent metric that has stayed right on course, and Bitcoin has really nothing structurally broken about the four-year cycle as things stand right now. Using this information, I size my entries correctly, and I understand when the season for buying is best to get into the market. You must time your entries so that you can understand if we're expected to keep finding lower or if we're in the window of opportunity where these entry points will be wished for years down the road. Having a plan for the accumulation stage instead of hoping this time is different is very, very important. The bottom line is that the chart doesn't care about your feelings or the latest narrative that's going on. The four-year cycle is still the closest thing to a roadmap crypto has ever given us.