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Bitcoin Data GuideBitcoin Reference

Cycles & Supply

Bitcoin's completed cycles, side by side

Each cycle measured the same way: from the low that ended the previous decline to the high that ended the advance. The comparison is the analysis — the individual cycles are only interesting in relation to one another.

2011-2025Source: Coinbase Exchange daily candles; Bitstamp and CoinDesk historical series for 2011-2014Cycles are bounded by the closing-price low and the subsequent closing-price high.

Cycles compared

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Completed low-to-high advances

Largest advance

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Longest advance

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The comparison table

Every row uses the same definition, which is what makes the table worth reading. The low is the closing price at the bottom of the preceding decline; the high is the closing price at the top of the advance that followed. The gain is measured between those two points, and the duration is the number of days between them. No row is measured from a different starting convention than any other, so the differences between rows are differences in the market rather than differences in the arithmetic.

Bitcoin market cycles with the low and high dates and prices that bound each one, the gain, the multiple and the duration in days.
CycleLow dateLowHigh dateHighGainMultipleDuration
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2011-2025Source: Coinbase Exchange daily candles; Bitstamp and CoinDesk historical series for 2011-2014

What counts as a cycle. A cycle here is a completed advance from a closing-price low to the closing-price high that followed it. The decline that comes after each high is a separate episode, published on the drawdowns page. Because the 2024-2025 cycle has printed a confirmed high — the 6 October 2025 peak — it appears as a row like any other; only an advance that is still open cannot be measured without assuming where it ends.

What changes between cycles, and what does not

The most striking feature of the table is the decline in magnitude. The earliest cycle multiplied the price by an order of magnitude several times over; the most recent completed cycle multiplied it by a much smaller factor. This is the pattern most often described as Bitcoin maturing, and the description is fair as far as it goes. A market with a larger capitalisation needs more money to move the same percentage, so the same enthusiasm produces a smaller percentage gain. That is arithmetic, not sentiment.

The second feature is the change in duration. The early cycles were short and violent; the later ones have taken longer to complete. Again the mechanism is not mysterious. A larger, more liquid market with more participants and more instruments absorbs flows more slowly, and the advance stretches out. The 2013 cycle ran its course in a matter of months. The 2020-21 cycle took well over a year from low to high, and the recovery from the decline that followed took longer still.

What has not changed is the shape. Every cycle in the table ends in a decline, and every decline has been deep enough to erase a large share of the advance. The magnitude of the fall has moderated alongside the magnitude of the rise, but the sequence — advance, peak, collapse, recovery — has repeated without exception. A reader who takes one thing from this comparison should take that: the pattern has been remarkably stable even as its amplitude has shrunk.

The sample is small, and that limits what can be concluded. Five completed cycles is not enough to establish a law, and the market structure has changed materially between each one. The comparison is a description of what has happened, not a model of what must happen next. The return profiles page takes the same question further, and the low-to-high returns page publishes the same advances with their annualised figures.

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