Is This the Worst Bitcoin Halving Cycle? What the Data Says

Most traders insist that this is the worst Bitcoin halving cycle in history, but data indicates the comparison may come from a skewed starting point.

These concerns have emerged due to Bitcoin’s ($BTC) performance since its fourth halving on April 19, 2024. The crypto asset now trades at $59,400, below the roughly $64,000 price it held on the day of the halving.

Bitcoin Halving-Day Buyers Still Underwater

This indicates that more than 800 days later, investors who bought Bitcoin on halving day are still sitting at a loss. This is the first time in Bitcoin’s history that halving-day buyers have remained underwater this far into a cycle. In every previous cycle, they were already in profit by this stage.

Bitcoin’s drop from its peak has also added to the concerns. Specifically, the crypto firstborn has fallen about 53% from its all-time high of around $126,000, reached on Oct. 6, 2025.

Now, while this decline is still smaller than the drops of more than 77% that followed the market peaks in 2018 and 2022, Bitcoin has not delivered the strong gains the market recorded in earlier cycles.

Skewed Starting Point

However, the halving date is a skewed starting point because this cycle began under conditions Bitcoin had never experienced before. Notably, $BTC had already reached a new all-time high of $73,800 on March 12, 2024, more than a month before the fourth halving.

This was a major change from previous cycles. In earlier halvings, Bitcoin had not yet moved above the previous bull market’s peak by the time the halving took place. As a result, on the halving day, the market still had room to climb before reaching new highs. This cycle followed a completely different path.

A major reason for the difference was the launch of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs in January 2024. These funds attracted massive institutional demand well before the halving reduced Bitcoin’s new supply. On the halving day, they had already attracted $12.3 billion in cumulative net inflows.

This early buying pushed Bitcoin’s price much higher before the halving even arrived, creating an unusually high starting point.

Realized Price Presents a Better Way to Compare Cycles

Many analysts consider realized price a better benchmark because it does not react as quickly to single events. Specifically, realized price measures the average cost of all coins in circulation based on the price at which each coin last moved on-chain.

Since realized price changes gradually as investors buy and sell Bitcoin, it is less affected by major events such as ETF approvals. This makes it a more stable way to compare different market cycles without the distortion created by Bitcoin’s unusually strong rally before the halving.

Bitcoin’s realized price currently stands at $53,197, while the spot price is around $59,400. That means the spot price trades at a premium of roughly 10% above the realized price, one of the smallest gaps seen during this cycle.

In past cycles, Bitcoin reached major market bottoms when the spot price moved this close to the realized price, including the lows recorded in 2015, late 2018 into 2019, and 2022.

Bitcoin Realized Price Still Shows This Has Been a Weak Cycle

Nonetheless, even after removing the effect of Bitcoin’s early rally, realized price does not make a bullish case for this cycle. Instead, it still points to weaker performance than previous halving periods.

During this cycle, the Bitcoin market price never moved far above realized price the way it did during the major bull market peaks of 2013, 2017, and 2021.

In those earlier cycles, heavy speculation pushed Bitcoin’s market value several times above the combined cost basis of all coins. Such a gap never developed this time, even when Bitcoin reached its record high in October 2025.

The smaller gap between spot price and realized price suggests this market has behaved differently from earlier ones. The current cycle has been shaped by steady institutional buying through spot Bitcoin ETFs instead of being driven mainly by retail speculation.

It is still too early to know whether this will lead to a smaller market bottom or simply a quieter bull market. However, while using realized price instead of the halving-day price removes the distortion caused by ETFs, it still indicates that the cycle has been worse than others at similar periods.