Major drawdowns since 2011
| peak | peak price | bottom | bottom price | depth | peak→bottom | peak→new ATH |
|---|
What this chart shows
Drawdown from ATH is the simplest honest answer to "how bad is it right now": the percentage distance between today's price and the highest price Bitcoin has ever traded. It is pure arithmetic on daily closes — no model, no weights, no opinion. The red area is that distance over the full history since 2011; the white line is price on a log scale for context.
How to read it
Zero means a fresh all-time high. Shallow dips of −10% to −30% are routine bull-market corrections and appear as narrow red teeth. The wide red basins are the real bear markets — every cycle so far has cut price by more than 70% from its peak. The interesting signal is usually the edges: drawdowns deeper than −70% have historically marked multi-year accumulation zones, while a long stay near 0% marks euphoria phases where risk runs hottest.
Where the data comes from
Daily closes from Bitstamp for 2011–2017 stitched to Binance spot from August 2017 onward — both free public feeds, the same class of data our live CVD terminal runs on. The series refreshes every hour; the headline in the title updates on every load.
FAQ
What is drawdown from ATH?
The percentage distance between the current price and the highest price ever reached. At a fresh all-time high the drawdown is 0%; in the 2022 bear market Bitcoin's drawdown reached −77%.
Where does the price data come from?
Daily closes from Bitstamp (2011–2017) stitched to Binance spot (2017–today). Both are free public exchange feeds; nothing is modeled or interpolated.
How deep do Bitcoin bear markets get?
Every cycle so far has produced a drawdown deeper than −70%: −93% in 2011, −85% in 2015, −84% in 2018 and −77% in 2022. Shallower corrections of −30% to −50% happen within bull markets as well.
How long does recovery to a new ATH take?
Historically between two and four years peak-to-new-peak: the 2013 high took ~1,180 days to reclaim, the 2017 high ~1,090 days, the 2021 high ~880 days.
How often does the page update?
The daily series refreshes every hour from exchange data; the headline numbers update on every page load.
Related: Cycle comparison · Power law model · Market structure playbook