Bitcoin market cycles compared

About cycle comparison

This view lines up every Bitcoin halving cycle from 2012 to today so they can be compared directly. Each cycle's price is anchored to its halving date and indexed to 100 at the halving, which makes the shape of the run-up, the peak and the drawdown comparable even though absolute prices differ by orders of magnitude.

The cycle-returns table measures the gain from each halving to that cycle's peak, and the diminishing-returns chart shows how those multiples have shrunk cycle after cycle. The current cycle is plotted on the same axes, so you can see whether it is running ahead of or behind its predecessors, while remembering that four cycles are a very small sample.

Price paths alone do not explain why a cycle is running hot or cold, so read this view alongside the on-chain valuation metrics: MVRV Z-Score, NUPL and realized price show how far the market sits above its aggregate cost basis, which is what has historically separated early-cycle recoveries from late-cycle excess. The ensemble phase card is a representative, clearly labelled illustration of the despair-to-euphoria track rather than a computed signal, and any forward-looking figure is marked as a projection, not a forecast. Everything else on the page is computed from recorded daily history.

Metrics used here: MVRV Z-Score · NUPL · MVRV · Realized price · 200-day MA ratio · all metrics