Bitcoin Yearly Candles
How has each year actually gone?
One candle per calendar year, from 2010 to today.
Bitcoin yearly candles
17 years, folded from 5,935 days of trading. A year’s candle runs from its first traded price to its last, and its wick is how far it went either way before it got there.
Step through the years
Read one year at a time: its opening price, its high, its low and where it finished, in the order the chart draws them.
What is 2026 doing so far?
−6.21% so far
Bitcoin opened 2026 at $87,568.38 and its latest daily close is $82,133.70. The high so far is $97,932.20 and the low is $57,740.00.
This candle is still being drawn. It covers 2026 up to the last settled daily close and finishes on the last day of the year.
How many years finished higher than they started?
12 of 16 finished up
The best of them was 2013 at +5,318.21%, and the worst 2018 at −72.94%. This year is not counted, because it is not finished.
How wide is 2026’s swing compared with past years?
Wider than 1 of 16 finished years
From its low to its high, 2026 has covered 70% so far. The high so far is $97,932.20 and the low $57,740.00.
A rank, not a forecast: it says how unusual the range has been so far, not where it goes next.
What does this mean for you?
A reminder of scale, not a signal
Bitcoin has finished 12 of its 16 completed years higher than it started, and the years it lost were not gentle: the worst of them gave back −72.94%. Both of those facts are the same asset.
The useful habit is to check how a year felt against how it finished. Long wicks are years that went a long way in both directions before landing where they landed, and the people who sold inside those wicks did not get the year the candle describes.
Understanding
Bitcoin's Yearly Candles
Where it stands today
Bitcoin opened 2026 at $87,568.38 and its latest daily close is $82,133.70, down 6.2% so far this year as of .
Zooming all the way out to one bar per year strips Bitcoin's history down to something you can hold in your head. Each bar shows four numbers for that year: the price it opened at in January, the highest it reached, the lowest it fell to, and where it finished in December.
What the shape tells you is how the year was earned. A tall body with short wicks was a year that went one way and stayed there. A short body between long wicks was a year that went a long way in both directions and ended near where it started, which feels nothing like a flat year to anyone who lived through it.
The scale button matters more here than almost anywhere else on the site. Bitcoin's first years traded in cents and its recent ones in tens of thousands, so on a plain scale the early history is a flat line along the bottom. The log scale gives each multiplication the same height, so an early year and a recent one show up as the same size of move when they were.
Two bars on this chart are not full years and are labelled that way. Reliable daily prices begin in July 2010, so the first bar covers half a year. The last bar is the year still running, so its close is the last settled daily close rather than a year-end one, and every figure on this page carries that day. the same years month by month and today’s price.
The numbers
behind the chart
What were each year's opening, high, low and closing prices?
| Year | Open | High | Low | Close | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026still running | $87,568.38 | $97,932.20 | $57,740.00 | $82,133.70 | −6.21% |
| 2025 | $93,461.80 | $126,236.00 | $74,467.80 | $87,568.42 | −6.31% |
| 2024 | $42,283.79 | $108,364.50 | $38,529.50 | $93,478.50 | +121.07% |
| 2023 | $16,536.80 | $44,727.90 | $16,497.51 | $42,283.29 | +155.69% |
| 2022 | $46,217.62 | $48,211.92 | $15,468.00 | $16,536.38 | −64.22% |
| 2021 | $28,956.86 | $69,000.00 | $27,706.00 | $46,215.65 | +59.60% |
| 2020 | $7,180.36 | $29,304.50 | $3,820.95 | $28,956.86 | +303.28% |
| 2019 | $3,747.39 | $13,826.76 | $3,362.24 | $7,183.88 | +91.70% |
| 2018 | $13,850.49 | $17,252.85 | $3,169.53 | $3,747.39 | −72.94% |
| 2017 | $963.38 | $19,870.62 | $739.55 | $13,850.40 | +1,337.69% |
| 2016 | $429.95 | $982.57 | $350.39 | $963.38 | +124.07% |
| 2015 | $318.24 | $492.80 | $157.29 | $429.95 | +35.10% |
| 2014 | $732.00 | $995.00 | $294.92 | $318.24 | −56.52% |
| 2013 | $13.51 | $1,216.84 | $13.16 | $732.00 | +5,318.21% |
| 2012 | $4.58 | $16.41 | $3.80 | $13.51 | +194.98% |
| 2011 | $0.3000 | $31.91 | $0.2890 | $4.72 | +1,474.00% |
| 2010 | $0.0495 | $0.5000 | $0.0100 | $0.3000 | +505.94% |
What is included in this record?
These 17 candles are folded from 5,935 days of trading, from to . A year’s open is its first traded price and its close is its last, so the change is measured inside the year and never against the year before it.
Two candles are not full years. Reliable daily prices begin in July 2010, so the first covers half a year. The last is 2026, still running: its close is the last settled daily close rather than a year-end one, which is why every figure on this page carries that day.
A day whose open or close falls outside its own high and low cannot describe a day of trading, so it is left out before the years are folded. That moves exactly one number here: 2014’s low.
Source: Maketo’s daily record of Bitcoin’s price, folded into one candle per calendar year. Days whose open or close falls outside their own high and low are left out, because they cannot describe a day of trading. Daily prices: .