In 2022, a Bitcoin cycle bottom fell below the previous peak for the first time. In 2026, it's happening again.

The Bitcoin asset page carries a price. This page describes the structure that price sits inside. Nothing here is a forecast; the ratios are read directly out of the peak, bottom and halving dates of every cycle to date, and the finding is that the numbers are getting smaller as the asset matures.

Sixteen years, on a log scale

Monthly closes from $0.07 (Jul 2010) through the current print. Triangles mark each cycle peak (up) and the bottom that followed (down), coloured by epoch.

The five epochs

Each cycle runs peak-to-peak with exactly one halving in between. The peak lands twelve to eighteen months after the halving that precedes it — a window that has stabilised at seventeen to eighteen months across the last three cycles.

Both slow drifts continue. Halving-to-peak stabilised at seventeen to eighteen months. The drawdown depth column keeps shrinking: −94, −85, −84, −77 — and the 2025 cycle is a work in progress.

Each Bitcoin cycle gains less, and falls less

Cycle to cycle, the upside multiple between peaks shrinks. The crash ratio down to each bottom shrinks with it. Bitcoin is maturing on both sides of the trade — smaller gains and smaller collapses.

The 0.84× reading for 2025 breaks the declining sequence because the low isn't in — following the drawdown trend (−85% → −84% → −77% → ~−74%) puts a confirmed bottom near $33k and the ratio at 0.48×, which continues the pattern: 5.55 → 2.76 → 0.79 → 0.48.

Where the monthly crosses actually fire

The same price series with the two moving-average systems overlaid. Red triangles are death crosses (fast below slow), teal are golden crosses (fast above slow). These land late on the price — they are confirmations, not calls.

Four checkpoints, and the time between them

Each cycle has four measurable points: the cycle peak, the death cross (monthly 10-EMA below 21-EMA), the bottom, and the golden cross. The intuitive order — peak → death → bottom → golden — held only in 2021. In 2013 and 2017 the monthly EMA is so slow that the bottom arrived roughly two and a half months before the death cross. The monthly death cross is a trailing confirmation of the decline, not an early warning; the golden cross is the reliable structural signal for the new uptrend.

Where the 2025 cycle stands today

The 2025 peak was $126,198 on 6 October 2025, seventeen and a half months after the April 2024 halving. Bitcoin traded into the $58k–$62k range in late June 2026 (a drawdown of roughly −52% from the peak), printed a first monthly death cross on the 10/20 SMA in May and on the 10/21 EMA in June, then recovered to trade in the mid-seventies through September 2026. The current print is $84,570, a drawdown of about −33% from the peak — above the June low but still well within the cycle's downtrend envelope.

The June ~$60k print sits at about eight months from the peak. Every prior mature cycle was still falling at that point — the historical peak-to-bottom leg is twelve to thirteen and a half months. Two readings are both live and neither is proved yet:

• The June low was the cycle bottom, arrived early. ETF flows, a structurally deeper institutional bid and a shallower drawdown across cycles all point the same way. Fidelity and Morgan Stanley have both argued in public that the four-year cycle may be flattening as Bitcoin matures.
• The June low was a lower-high in a longer bear. The historical twelve-to-thirteen-month peak-to-bottom constant is the single most stable number in the dataset — every other cycle stat has moved. The current +28% recovery from the June low looks large but sits inside the normal amplitude of bear-market rallies. A confirmed bottom would arrive in late Q4 2026 on the historical pattern.

Both remain consistent with the data at hand. The site does not adjudicate between them — a monthly golden cross (10 back above 21) is the reliable structural confirmation, and by the historical pattern it trails the eventual bottom by five to twelve months. It has not fired yet.

Where it could bottom, if the pattern holds

Continuing the shrinking-drawdown trend (−85%, −84%, −77%, then something shallower) gives a 2025-cycle bottom in the −64% to −74% range: approximately $33k to $45k. The already-shallower drawdown to date hints at a shallower still floor near $50–60k if the compression accelerates.

The bearish cases are kept in because exogenous shocks override internal patterns. March 2020 cut BTC by half in a day and WTI crude futures went negative; a structural institutional bid does not floor price in a shock, it just means patient capital waiting for a lower price.

The bear-market timing itself

A cycle's bear has two phases: the decline (peak → bottom) and the accumulation window (bottom → the golden cross that confirms the next uptrend). The decline is remarkably steady; the accumulation window is where patient capital builds positions before the markup, and it has run anywhere from ~5.5 to ~12.5 months.

Mapping onto the current cycle: the October 2025 peak plus a ~13-month decline points to a bottom around Q4 2026, and a further ~6–12-month accumulation window puts the next confirmed uptrend somewhere in mid-to-late 2027. The scenario prices above are an accumulation range over that window, not a single-day level.

The one constant worth trusting

Every other number in the dataset moves. Peak-to-peak multiples move. Peak-to-bottom ratios move. Recovery multiples collapse cycle after cycle. Even the peak-to-death-cross delay is shrinking. But the peak-to-bottom leg does not move: 13.5, 11.9, 12.4 months. If that constant holds a fourth time, the 2025 cycle bottoms around October or November 2026. Price is the noisy variable in Bitcoin cycles; the duration of the fall is the stable one.