Research · Altcoins
ICP price history against Bitcoin's cycle phases
Last reviewed 2026-09-21Source: CoinGecko historical price data; Bitcoin cycle phase dates from this site's cycle recordPhase boundaries are editorial dates drawn from the Bitcoin record; no ICP price level is asserted here.
Dataset, period and method
The dataset is the daily ICP price series published by CoinGecko, which begins at the token's public listing in May 2021. The comparison period is therefore May 2021 to the review date, and it covers the whole of ICP's traded history. Bitcoin's series is the daily record this site already publishes, and the cycle phases used as the frame are the dated expansion and contraction phases from the site's own cycle record.
The method is deliberately simple. Each ICP observation is assigned to the Bitcoin cycle phase that contains its date, and the page reports what ICP did inside each phase rather than computing a relationship between the two series. No regression, correlation coefficient or beta is estimated here, because the sample is short and the phases are not independent observations. The limitations section states what that rules out.
One structural point belongs up front. ICP listed in May 2021, which is late in Bitcoin's 2020–2021 expansion. The token therefore has no observation from the 2018–2019 contraction, from the 2020 recovery, or from any earlier cycle. Any statement about how ICP behaves "across cycles" is a statement about at most two phases of one Bitcoin cycle plus the contraction that followed it.
The overlap, phase by phase
| Bitcoin cycle phase | Window | ICP coverage | What the overlap can and cannot show |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020–2021 expansion | Mar 2020 – Nov 2021 | Partial — from the May 2021 listing | ICP's first months fall inside this phase, but the token had no price before it, so the phase is observed only in its final stretch. |
| 2021–2022 contraction | Nov 2021 – Nov 2022 | Full | The only Bitcoin phase ICP has lived through end to end. A single complete observation cannot establish a pattern. |
| 2022–2024 recovery | Nov 2022 – Mar 2024 | Full | A second full phase, but it follows the first immediately, so the two are not independent draws. |
| 2024–2025 expansion | Mar 2024 – review date | Partial — ongoing | An unfinished phase. Its outcome is unknown, so it cannot be used as evidence of anything. |
Last reviewed 2026-09-21Source: CoinGecko (ICP listing date); Bitcoin cycle phase dates from this site's cycle recordPhase windows are editorial dates. No ICP return or price level is stated in this table.
Read as a table of dates, the overlap is unremarkable: a token that listed in 2021 has traded through the phases that occurred after 2021. Read as evidence, it is close to empty. There is one complete Bitcoin contraction in the ICP record and one complete recovery, and those two phases are adjacent rather than independent. A sample of two adjacent observations cannot distinguish a relationship from a coincidence, and it certainly cannot support a claim that Bitcoin's cycle drove ICP's price.
The honest use of this framing is orientation. If a reader wants to know when ICP's largest declines occurred relative to Bitcoin's, the phase labels give them a shared calendar to do that with. They do not license the next step, which would be to attribute ICP's moves to Bitcoin's phase. The ICP–BTC correlation page works through why a young series supports weaker conclusions, and the cycle comparison page holds the Bitcoin-side record this framing borrows.
Limitations
The first limitation is the listing date. ICP's series begins in May 2021, so the comparison cannot speak to any Bitcoin cycle before that. A reader looking for a multi-cycle record will not find one here, and the page does not pretend otherwise.
The second is that the phase boundaries are editorial. Bitcoin's cycles do not announce themselves; the dates used here are the ones this site applies consistently across its cycle pages, and a different set of boundaries would move observations between phases. That sensitivity is a reason to treat phase-level summaries as descriptive rather than analytical.
The third is the distinction between timing and cause. Two series that move in the same calendar window may be responding to a common factor — a change in the cost of capital, a shift in risk appetite across the whole market — rather than to each other. Nothing in this page's method separates those explanations, and no page on this site claims that Bitcoin caused an altcoin's move on the strength of co-movement alone.
Sources and references
The ICP listing date and price series come from CoinGecko's published historical data. The Bitcoin cycle phase dates are this site's own editorial record, documented on the cycle pages.
- ICP historical price data. CoinGecko, Internet Computer (ICP): the daily price series and the May 2021 listing date used as the start of the comparison period.
- Bitcoin's cycle record. Bitcoin Data Guide, Market Cycles: the dated expansion and contraction phases used as the frame.
- Cycle-by-cycle comparison. Bitcoin Data Guide, Cycle Comparison: how Bitcoin's completed cycles are defined and measured.
Related reading
- Research HubEvery dataset on the site, with methodology and provenance.
- Altcoin ResearchAltcoins measured against Bitcoin: design intent, consensus, execution, scaling and market structure.
- The ETH-BTC Correlation RecordHow the correlation is measured, how it behaves across windows, and where it breaks down.
- The ETH/BTC RatioWhat the ratio measures, how to read its trend, and why it is not a forecast.
- ETH During Bitcoin Bull PhasesAssociation within a common market factor, and what co-movement cannot establish.
- ETH During Bitcoin Bear PhasesDrawdown depth and duration compared over identical windows, and the limits of the comparison.