Bitcoin price history

How to read it

Price is plotted on a logarithmic axis, which is the only honest way to show an asset that has risen by several orders of magnitude. On a log scale equal vertical distances represent equal percentage moves, so the 2013 and 2021 cycles are visually comparable instead of the earlier one being flattened into a line along the bottom.

Where the numbers come from

The daily series is rebuilt each day from public market data. The final point, and the tiles above, are fetched live from CoinGecko when you load the page — an aggregate across exchanges rather than one venue's last trade. The two sources differ by a few dollars, which we label rather than hide.

What it doesn't tell you

A price chart is a record, not a forecast, and a log axis makes long-run growth look smoother than it felt to live through — every one of those gentle slopes contains drawdowns of 50% or more. For that side of the story see drawdown from all-time high and realized volatility.

How to read it

Daily closing price on a log axis, over the longest continuous history available. Log scaling is not a stylistic choice here: on a linear axis, everything before 2017 compresses into a flat line against the ground, and the 2013 cycle — an 84% drawdown — becomes literally invisible. On a log axis equal vertical distances are equal percentage moves, so every cycle is legible at once.

How it's calculated

Daily closes from the longest-running series in the market-data store, which begins in September 2014. The CSV below this chart is the same numbers the line is drawn from.

What it did in past cycles

The shape of the record, in four peaks and three completed bear markets:

• 2013-12-04 — $1,135, then −84.5% to $176 by 2015-01-14
• 2017-12-16 — $19,641, then −83.8% to $3,185 by 2018-12-15
• 2021-11-08 — $67,542, then −76.7% to $15,758 by 2022-11-09
• 2025-10-06 — $124,824, with the lowest close since at $58,525 on 2026-06-30, −53.1%

Two patterns run through that list. Each peak is a smaller multiple of the last — 17.3×, then 3.4×, then 1.9× — and each completed drawdown has been slightly shallower, taking eleven to thirteen months to reach its low in every case.

The other durable fact is the floor: each bear-market low has been several times the previous one. $176, $3,185, $15,758.

What it doesn't tell you

A closing price is one number from a day that contained a range, so this chart understates what any given day felt like. It is a single venue's consolidated view rather than a global volume-weighted average, and it is denominated in dollars — the same history against gold looks materially different.

It is also, on its own, the least informative chart on this site. Price tells you what was paid, not whether it was a lot, and every other page here exists to supply the second half of that.

Reading it with other metrics

Drawdown from ATH is this chart's most useful companion — the same data expressed as how far below the high you are, which is what holding it actually feels like.

The 4-year cycle adds halving markers to the same line, and the power law adds a fitted long-run trend. For the question of whether a given price is expensive, MVRV is the place to start.