Research · Altcoins · Strand D

SOL versus BTC drawdowns

Both assets have fallen a long way from a peak more than once. This page sets the two records side by side, states the peak and trough dates that define each drawdown, and is careful about what a comparison of two price paths can support.

Last reviewed 2026-09-21Source: CoinGecko daily close series for SOL and BTC; Glassnode market-cycle researchMethod and dated peak/trough identification only. No percentage decline is asserted here that the reader cannot recompute from the cited daily series.

How a drawdown is measured

A drawdown is the decline from a running peak to the lowest point that follows it, measured on the daily close series. The peak is the highest close reached before the decline begins, and the trough is the lowest close reached before a new peak is set. The decline is the change between those two points, and the recovery time is the interval from the trough back to the previous peak.

The series are the CoinGecko daily closes for SOL and BTC, from SOL's first liquid market in August 2020 to the last complete month before this page's review date. Because the two assets share a window, the comparison is like-for-like: the same dates, the same measurement, the same source.

Two conventions matter and are stated here so the figures can be reproduced. First, the measurement uses closing prices rather than intraday extremes, which means a wick that briefly traded lower than the close is not counted. Second, a drawdown ends only when the previous peak is regained, not when the price stops falling. A reader who wants the general treatment of the concept should read drawdown explained.

The two records side by side

Drawdown episodes for SOL and BTC over their shared window, with the peak and trough dates that define each one.
Asset	Peak date	Trough date	Character of the decline
SOL	Nov 2021	Dec 2022	The deepest decline in SOL's record. The fall was larger than BTC's over the same window, and it was extended by asset-specific events in late 2022.
BTC	Nov 2021	Nov 2022	A severe decline by Bitcoin's own historical standards, but shallower than SOL's over the same dates.
SOL	Dec 2022	Dec 2022	The trough of the 2022 decline, from which the recovery began.
BTC	Nov 2022	Nov 2022	The trough of Bitcoin's 2022 decline, reached roughly a month before SOL's.
SOL	2024 high	2024 low	A shorter and shallower episode than 2022, consistent with a market that had already repriced.
BTC	2024 high	2024 low	A comparable episode on the same dates, with a smaller decline than SOL's.

Last reviewed 2026-09-21Source: CoinGecko daily close series for SOL and BTCPeak and trough dates are identified from the cited daily closes. The character descriptions summarise the path; the dates are the checkable part.

The asymmetry, and why it is not surprising

The consistent feature of the comparison is that SOL's declines have been deeper than BTC's over the same windows. That is the expected behaviour of a smaller, younger asset with a shorter track record and a thinner holder base, and it is the same pattern that appears when any high-beta asset is compared with the market it trades against.

The mechanism is not mysterious. A smaller asset has fewer participants, less depth, and a holder base that is more concentrated and more sensitive to the same news. When the market factor turns negative, the smaller asset is sold harder, and the price has further to fall before enough buyers appear. None of this requires a claim about the quality of either network; it is a statement about market structure.

The recovery side is the mirror image and is usually left out. A deeper decline means a larger percentage gain is required to regain the peak, and the recovery time is correspondingly longer. The drawdown comparison is therefore not just about the fall; it is about the whole round trip, and the round trip is what a holder actually experiences.

What this page does not claim

A drawdown is a description of a price path. It is not a measure of risk in any complete sense, and it is not a forecast. Two assets can have identical maximum drawdowns and very different risk profiles, because the drawdown says nothing about how often declines occur, how long they last, or how the asset behaves when the market is calm.

The comparison also inherits the window problem. SOL's record begins in 2020, so the comparison covers one major cycle. Bitcoin's own history contains deeper and longer drawdowns than the ones in this window, and those are not part of the comparison because SOL did not exist for them. A reader should not conclude from this page that Bitcoin's downside is bounded by what appears here.

Finally, the two assets' declines are not independent events. They occurred over the same dates because both were responding to the same market conditions. The comparison is informative about relative magnitude, and it is not evidence that one asset's decline caused the other's.

Dataset, period, method and limitations

Dataset: CoinGecko daily close series for SOL and BTC, with cycle context cross-checked against Glassnode's market-cycle research.
Period: August 2020 to the last complete month before the review date, so both assets are measured over the same dates.
Method: Peak-to-trough decline measured on daily closes. The peak is the highest close before the decline; the trough is the lowest close before a new peak is set. Intraday extremes are not counted, and a drawdown ends only when the previous peak is regained.
Limitations: Closing prices understate the extremes, and the effect is larger for SOL in its early months. The record covers a single cycle, so any pattern observed in it describes that cycle. The comparison does not adjust for the difference in market depth between the two assets.

Where this sits in the wider record

The drawdown comparison is the downside counterpart to the SOL/BTC ratio across cycles, which covers the relative-price record over the same window. The bull and bear phase page places these declines inside Bitcoin's own phase structure.

For Bitcoin's own drawdown record, including the deeper declines that predate SOL, see Bitcoin drawdowns and recovery time.

Sources and references

Every source below is named and linked. Where a page describes a method rather than a figure, the source is the specification or documentation that defines the method. Last reviewed 2026-09-21.

Solana historical data. CoinGecko, www.coingecko.com/en/coins/solana: the series from which SOL's peaks and troughs are dated.
Bitcoin historical data. CoinGecko, www.coingecko.com/en/coins/bitcoin: the series from which BTC's peaks and troughs are dated.
Market-cycle research. Glassnode, insights.glassnode.com/: used to cross-check the cycle boundaries and the characterisation of the 2022 decline.
Bitcoin drawdowns. Bitcoin Data Guide, bitcoindataguide.com/drawdowns: the deeper declines that predate SOL's market history.
Drawdown explained. Bitcoin Data Guide, bitcoindataguide.com/drawdown-explained: the measurement convention applied above.