Bitcoin Cut In Half

While there was a small rebound in weekend trading in addition to the start of the week on Monday, Bitcoin (BTC.X) remains one of the more notable pain trades of late. As shown below, the world's largest cryptocurrency has been in a downtrend since last fall when it broke below its 200-DMA.  With a series of lower highs and lower lows since then, Bitcoin made an attempt to run up to that moving average as recently as mid-May, but the steep leg lower since then has resulted in 52-week lows last week when it traded below $60K for the first time since October 2024.

Talk about an ugly chart...

In the chart below, we show bitcoin drawdowns from all time highs since 2017 (when the crypto first traded above $1,000 and roughly when it came into the mainstream).  It goes without saying that Bitcoin has been a volatile instrument. Since the start of 2017, it has been in a 37% drawdown on average. That includes a couple extended periods without new highs such as from 2018 through 2020 and 2022 through 2024. The crypto again finds itself in not only a longstanding drawdown (as of Monday it is on its 245th day without a fresh high, the third longest streak on record), but nearly cut in half versus its high from last October.