A Bitcoin cycle lasts roughly four years. It begins with the halving, followed by a bull run, followed by a crash, followed by a long period of readjustment where the price is relatively stable, which lingers seemingly endlessly, until the next halving.
This is, of course, a gross oversimplification, but it's important to understand that a Bitcoin cycle consists of four phases:
The Halving.
A bull run.
A crash.
A long readjustment period that lasts until the next halving.
A quick note on the price before I continue: The price of Bitcoin is literally what sellers are willing to sell their coins for, and what buyers are willing to pay for them. Price is the equilibrium of supply and demand.
The halving is when the Bitcoin block reward is cut in half. Since block rewards are the only way new Bitcoin is created, cutting the reward in half means cutting the supply of new Bitcoin entering circulation in half. A decreasing supply leads to increasing prices, which leads to the bull run.
Newly mined Bitcoins don't enter circulation until the miners who receive them choose to sell. When prices are rising, miners try to postpone selling their coins as long as possible in order to fetch higher prices for them.
The combination of the block reward being cut in half and would-be sellers hoarding as they wait for higher prices creates a supply shock where demand for Bitcoin far exceeds the supply. This causes prices to rise even further.
Hello, FOMO.
As prices escalate, the Fear Of Missing Out causes buyers to swoop in before the price climbs higher, which then pushes prices higher, which leads to more FOMO, which pushes prices even higher. Eventually, the price will reach a point where it exceeds what buyers are willing to pay. The lack of buyers leads to panic as sellers try to cash out before the crash, which then exacerbates the crash.
FOMO buying pushed the price up. Panic selling drives the price back down.
After the crash that ends a bull run, there's a long readjustment period where the price of Bitcoin is relatively stable. This can last for around two years and it's boring, but it's also the time to to buy as much Bitcoin as you can before the next halving kicks off the next cycle and prices begin to soar again.
A Bitcoin cycle lasts four years, give or take a few weeks due to the variable difficulty of mining blocks on the blockchain. Each phase of a Bitcoin cycle can and will have price spikes and dips. The process will not be pretty. People who are prone to panic will get crushed and financially wrecked. People who hodl will be rewarded for their patience.
tl;dr:
Treat every Bitcoin purchase as an investment you will hold until the year after the next halving. Do this, and you'll do very well. This is not financial advice, of course :)
Have no fear. Hold through the halving, plus a year.
— Posted on March 21st, 2021