← Bitcoin Panic

The record

7 times when Bitcoin crashed 50% or more

Bitcoin has crashed by large percentages since its inception. Cryptocurrency is volatile, with a track record of boom and bust cycles. The movements in the price are based purely on speculation about how people think it will perform.

Here are 7 times when BTC crashed 50% or more

The bars are drawn to the size of the fall. Where the old site recorded the price levels, they’re listed underneath.

  1. June 2011

    -99%

    From $32 to $0.01

  2. August 2012

    -56%

  3. April 2013

    -83%

    From nearly $260 to $50

  4. December 2013

    -50%

  5. December 2018

    -84%

  6. March 2020

    -50%

  7. May 2021

    -53%

Bitcoin recovered after every one of those falls. That’s a description of what already happened, and it says nothing about what the price does next.

Right now it’s $65,065, +1.3% over 24 hours.

What the list is for

Two of these crashes wiped out more than four fifths of the price. One of them, in June 2011, took Bitcoin from $32 to a single cent. If you had been watching the chart that week, it would have looked like the end.

It wasn’t, and neither were the other six. That’s the only claim this page makes. It isn’t a promise that the next fall behaves the same way, because nobody knows that, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing.

What the record is genuinely useful for is scale. When a headline calls a 6% day a collapse, it helps to know what a collapse has actually looked like.

The obituaries are worth reading too: three published calls that Bitcoin was finished, with the price on the day each one ran.

Nothing on this page is financial advice. These are historical figures carried over from the previous version of this site. They’re published for information only and they’re not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything.