How do the current bitcoin rallies compare to historical ones?

Here’s how the current bitcoin rally stacks up against the previous ones in terms of drawdown so far.

The current bitcoin rally has seen a peak drop of -18.6% so far

In a recent tweet, on-chain analytics firm glassnode Compare the latest bitcoin rally to that seen in the entire history of the cryptocurrency.

Typically, rallies are compared using metrics such as the percentage price uplift recorded during them or the amount of time they last (which can be measured in terms of blocks produced, as in cycles). seen in terms of halving). However, here, Glassnode has taken a different approach that provides a fresh perspective on these rallies.

The comparison between the price hikes here is based on the drawbacks that each of them experienced in their expansions. Note that these drawdowns should not be confused with cyclical drawdowns, which are used to measure how far the price has declined since the bull run top.

The drawdowns in question are the hurdles that the cryptocurrency faced during the rallies, and therefore, are the ones that the coin eventually managed to overcome.

Here’s a chart showing the degree of decline in each historical bull market, and also where the current rally stands in comparison to them:

Looks like the value of the metric hasn't been too high for the latest rally so far | Source: Glassnode on Twitter

Here are the five bull rallies from genesis: 2011 (first rally), 2011–2013, 2015–2017, 2018–2021 (last rally), and 2022 cycle+ (ongoing).

The analytics firm here takes the bottom of each bear market as the start of the next bull rallies. This means that parts of the cycle that some might not consider to be part of a proper bull run are also included.

A prime example of this would be the April 2019 rally, which is often considered its own thing but paired with previous bitcoin bull markets in the above chart.

From the graph, it is visible that the deepest drop during the first bull market measured around -49.4%. In the next round, the 2011 to 2013 bulls experienced an even bigger hurdle of -71.2% in between.

The next one (2015-2017) saw a drawdown of only -36%, but the drawdown was again at -62.6% for the subsequent run (i.e., the latest bull market).

So far in the 2022+ bitcoin bull market (which would only be considered a bull market if the November 2022 bottom was actually a cyclical bottom), the deepest drop seen so far was a -18.6% drop in March 2023.

Obviously, the downside seen so far in the current rally is much smaller than the historical bullish markets. If past patterns hold any weight, it would mean that the current bull market should still have more upside potential.

btc price

At the time of writing, bitcoin is trading around $26,900, down 2% over the past week.

BTC has been moving sideways recently | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView

Featured images from iStock.com, Charts from TradingView.com, Glassnode.com