Bitcoin Cycle History

A market cycle is one round trip: a bull leg up from a bottom to a peak, then a bear leg down to the next bottom. This chart marks every confirmed peak and bottom in Bitcoin's history and draws a straight line between them rather than the actual daily price, so each leg reads as pivot to pivot with the chop stripped out.

Laid out on a log scale, the legs are comparable across eras even though the dollar sizes are wildly different.

Because each leg is a direct line from its start to its end, what you're reading is the net result of that phase, not the path: how far price moved and how long it took, without the daily swings that would otherwise dominate the chart.

Comparing legs side by side shows how the size and length of Bitcoin's moves have changed over time, the raw material behind the diminishing-returns pattern the timing indicators lean on.

A cycle's peak and bottom are only certain in hindsight. The most recent leg is always provisional until its turning point is confirmed, and a later revision redraws it.

With only a handful of complete cycles on record, any pattern read across them rests on a small sample.