Bitcoin cycles & crashes
Bitcoin moves in violent cycles: a run to a new high, then a brutal drawdown, then years clawing back. Here is every major bear market since 2011 — how deep it fell, how long the fall took, and how long until a new all-time high. History, not a forecast. Not financial advice.
Source: Blockchain.com all-time market price (weekly resolution, so intraday peaks read slightly below the famous round numbers). ATH and drawdown are computed from this series. As of 2026-07-13.
Every major crash (50%+ drawdowns)
| Peak | Trough | Drawdown | Time down | To new ATH |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-10$123,519 | 2026-07$58,534 | -53% | 9 mo | not yet |
| 2021-11$64,839 | 2022-11$16,195 | -75% | 1.0 yr | 1.3 yr |
| 2017-12$18,912 | 2018-12$3,308 | -83% | 12 mo | 2.0 yr |
| 2013-11$1,134 | 2015-01$210 | -81% | 1.1 yr | 2.1 yr |
| 2013-04$163 | 2013-04$68 | -58% | 8 days | 6 mo |
| 2011-06$32 | 2011-11$2 | -92% | 5 mo | 1.3 yr |
- Every cycle top has been followed by a drawdown deep into the 70s to 90s of percent — the 2011 crash reached -92%, the deepest on record.
- Recoveries are slow: the trough-to-new-high wait has run into years, not months (about 1.4 yr on average across completed cycles).
- The deepest crashes have tended to get shallower as the market has grown larger and harder to move — a pattern in the table above, not a promise.
- The rough four-year cadence lines up loosely with the halving, but that is a story with only a handful of data points.
For Bitcoin, the percentage of market cap lost in a crash is essentially the same as the percentage of price lost, because supply grows slowly and predictably (market cap = price × coins in circulation); the cap fall is marginally smaller than the price fall since coins kept being mined through each crash. Past cycles do not predict future ones — Bitcoin could behave nothing like its history. Educational only, not investment advice.