Bitcoin at a glance
Ten plain questions. Each answered with one number, a picture of where that number sits in its own history, and a sentence saying what it means. Nothing here is a recommendation.
Snapshot 2 September 2026 · all sources current
What does one bitcoin cost?
$77,41138% below its highest ever close of $124,777
today
five years agoall-time high
How far does it fall?
-38%from its high, so far in this cycle
This is the first thing worth knowing, because it decides what everything below is worth to you. Every cycle on record has contained a fall of at least three quarters.
2011–12-93%
2013–15-85%
2017–18-84%
2021–22-77%
this cycle-38%
If a fall of half would force you to sell, that is a fact about your position rather than about the market, and no reading on this page changes it.
Is it cheap or expensive right now?
Averagecheaper than 62% of all days since 2013
38
very cheapaveragevery expensive
Three ways of valuing bitcoin — against what holders paid, against its long-run trend in time, and against the size of its network — each ranked against every day since 2013, then averaged. What has followed from each state.
What did the people holding it pay?
$53,081the average coin last changed hands here — price is 1.46× that
Every coin valued at the price it last moved on the blockchain. Above one, the network as a whole is in profit. Past cycle tops came at three to four times. Realised value.
Where is it in the four-year cycle?
1.2×higher than on halving day, 865 days ago
Bitcoin’s new supply halves roughly every four years. Measuring each cycle from its halving day puts them on the same footing, and each has multiplied less than the one before.
2012 cycle18.9×
2016 cycle6.8×
2020 cycle2.2×
this cycle1.2×
All measured at the same day count. Four cycles is the entire history, far too few to call it a rule. Cycle monitor.
Is the market crowded?
Middling51st percentile of crowding — traders pay 6.5% a year to be long
51
washed outcrowded and levered
How much borrowed money is in the market and how eager it is. Neither extreme today. Insurance against a fall is priced unusually cheaply, which says what protection costs rather than what happens next. Flows and positioning.
How much do the ETFs hold?
865,175bitcoin — about 4.3% of every coin that exists
Counted only from issuers publishing a daily figure a machine can read: five of them. Seven more report to the regulator each quarter. This is not the total held by all US funds, and the flows page names the ones missing. Coverage.
What is it worth in gold?
15.6 oz58% below its December 2024 peak of 37.1 ounces
Gold has beaten bitcoin in two calendar years running, which has not happened before. Rules for switching between the two are tested on the relative value page, and most of them lose.
Is this a bubble?
Nothe bubble model finds no accelerating pattern on any of its eight windows
There is a model built to detect the runaway acceleration that preceded some past crashes. It reads zero today. It also read zero before the October 2025 top, which is why the autopsy page publishes its whole record and not just today’s reading.
Why believe any of this?
You can check it
Every figure comes from a public daily snapshot of thirteen free sources, computed in your browser, with the workings on the page it came from. Every mistake found so far is listed with its date and what changed. Methods and corrections.
What the tests say
The part most sites leave out. Each line is a result from testing the claim against its own history, not an opinion about it.
Do the popular chart signals work?Relative strength, moving-average crossings, MACD and the rest, each compared with buying on a randomly chosen day.7 of the 8 tested did no better than a random dayBitcoin rose after most days in this period, so “price went up after my signal” proves nothing on its own. Each rule is measured against what an ordinary day did instead.
Does valuation warn before a crash?The ten largest declines since 2013, chosen by rule, with every indicator replayed as it read the day before.It flagged 4 of 5 cycle tops, and none of the 4 sudden crashesThe slow tops came after price got expensive, so valuation saw them. The sudden crashes started from ordinary valuations, because a cascade of forced selling is not the same thing as being overpriced.
Does money printing move bitcoin?Central bank rates, money supply, net liquidity, credit spreads and equity volatility, tested at every lead from zero to twenty-six weeks.No series beat what random chance produces on data like this
Does the bubble model predict crashes?The 561 days it has fired since 2013, against every other eligible day.A big fall followed 28% of them, and 34% of all daysFewer, not more. On this record the model tends to fire during the accelerating part of a rise, and those rises mostly kept going.
Does switching between bitcoin and gold beat holding?Momentum and mean-reversion rules at three lookback lengths each.3 of 9 win, and changing the lookback flips the answer
Does network size explain price better than time alone?The Metcalfe network model against a plain trend in time, refitted every year.Slightly better in 5 of 7 years, which is not clearly better
What the evidence supports today
- Adding
- Moderate. Price is in a drawdown, miners are recovering, and valuation is unremarkable rather than stretched.
- Reducing
- None. Not in the one state with a poor forward record, no fear priced into options, and no tested sell rule with an edge.
- Hedging
- Moderate. Protection is cheap at today’s volatility, if you want it.
- Rotating
- None. The rules are not robust; the lookback decides the answer.
No tested evidence currently establishes an advantage in adding, reducing or rotating. Which of these applies to you depends on your horizon, how much you hold, tax, and whether a fall of half would force you to sell.