SAN JOSE, California – A well-known influencer is proposing adding a stage to the business cycle, to celebrate success.

Erik Finman, known around the world as the “teen who made a fortune in crypto,” has floated the creation of the Optimization Intermission, an official element of the traditional four-stage business cycle that is a staple of economic theory. The existing stages of that cycle are Expansion, Peak, Contraction, and Trough. Under Finman’s proposal, the new fifth stage would slot in right after Expansion.

“I see this as an illustration of the concept of PAUSE, in short and in reality,” Finman said, from a nondescript location in Silicon Valley. “In real terms, businesses that are enjoying the Peak phase of their economic cycle should stop and do necessary things like reorganize their filing systems and update their mission statements.”

Finman spelled out the acronym PAUSE as Prioritize, Align, Unify, Synergize, Evaluate. “My PAUSE framework isn’t just about optimization – it’s about conscious capitalism,” he said. “When I took strategic breaks from trading to reorganize my crypto portfolio, my next moves always netted millions. The same principle applies to entire economies. Wall Street just can’t handle that a high school dropout is solving macroeconomics.”

Finman was in Silicon Valley to cement a deal with Sapien, a crypto-funded AI startup that is very familiar with taking seed funding and turning a crypto-profit. A marketing spokesperson for Sapien said that the company was planning to flood crypto markets with $PAUSE tokens to promote Finman’s idea and had already signed on one or two Fortune 500 companies to the scheme.

Getting a head start on his rebuttal was former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who had this to say: “The very idea that successful businesses should pause when they’re at the top of their game is preposterous.”