Bitcoin all-time high and real returns BTC

Bitcoin's highest recorded price was $126,080 on 6 October 2025, from CoinGecko's record of intraday trades. We can't restate it in today's dollars: US CPI was not published for Oct 2025. In pounds it was £95,944 at the time, or £98,552 after UK inflation.

On month-end closes, which is what our tables use, the peak was $115,764 in Jul 2025, worth $120,040 today. The latest price is 30.6% below the real high.

Our monthly history for Bitcoin starts in October 2013. Since then it is up 40,812% in dollars and up 28,424% after US inflation, so it has beaten inflation over that stretch. Measured in pounds after UK CPI the figure is up 34,180%. Against the US M2 money supply it is up 19,160%.

After the Nov 2013 peak of $994.90 it fell 77.3% by Apr 2015, and closed above the old high again after 3 years 3 months. In real terms it took 3 years 3 months. After the Dec 2017 peak of $13,716 it fell 75.0% by Jan 2019, and closed above the old high again after 2 years 10 months. In real terms it took 2 years 11 months. After the Oct 2021 peak of $61,300 it fell 73.0% by Dec 2022, and closed above the old high again after 2 years 5 months. In real terms it took 2 years 5 months.

These use month-end closes, so intraday highs and lows were more extreme.

Bitcoin was trading at $83,204 when we last checked, at 00:14 BST on 14 Oct 2026, which is up 1.5% on 24 hours earlier. Crypto never closes, so we fetch a fresh price from CoinGecko every five minutes, and the figure here can be a few minutes old by the time you read it. At that price all the Bitcoin in circulation is worth about $1.67tn, and $31.8bn changed hands over the past day. Over the last month the price has moved +8.3% and over the last year −27.8%.

No, or at least not on the 14-day RSI, which reads 52.2 at the moment. We'd only start calling Bitcoin overbought above 70 and it hasn't been there since 22 Sept 2026, while the last time it went the other way and dropped below 30 was 10 Jun 2026. RSI looks back over 14 sessions and asks how much of the movement was up and how much was down, so a reading in the 50s or 60s mostly tells us the past few weeks have been fairly even. Bitcoin spent 15 sessions at 70 or above in the past year, which is one reason we don't treat a high reading as a cue to sell: in a strong run it can stay there for weeks.

Going back to 13 Oct 2025, Bitcoin's best day was 6 Feb 2026, when it rose 12.2%, and its worst was 5 Feb 2026, a fall of 13.9%. We measure each day from one daily close to the next in US dollars, so a spike that reversed within the same day won't show up here. Across those 366 days it moved 5% or more on 17 of them and finished higher 48% of the time, which gives you a feel for how bumpy holding it has been.

Over the past 12 months Bitcoin is down 27.8%, and since the start of the year it is down 4.9%. We put it next to the S&P 500 (through the SPY fund) because that is the obvious alternative for most people weighing up Bitcoin, and it moved +17.4% over the same 12 months, a gap of 45.2 points in the S&P 500's favour.

About 27.8%, so it would need to rise 38.4% to get back there. The highest close in the past year was $115,166 on 13 Oct 2025 and the lowest was $58,532 on 30 Jun 2026, which puts today's price 44% of the way up that range. We work this out from daily closing prices rather than the intraday highs and lows an exchange reports, so our high can be a little lower than the one you'll see quoted elsewhere.

Bitcoin is 34.0% below its all-time high of $126,080, which it set on 6 October 2025, and its all-time low is $67.81, from July 2013. At $83,204 it is much closer to its high than most of the coins we track. These figures come from CoinGecko and refresh every five minutes. We spell the high out because the old version of this screener got it wrong. When we checked it on 10 October 2026 it was still saying Bitcoin had peaked at $109k in January 2025, a line typed into its code that was nine months and about $17,000 out of date, so here the high is read from CoinGecko on every refresh.

Bitcoin is at the lower end of Fair value: at least two of the sell-side conditions are met (Price 34% below ATH, greed high and funding negative), though not enough for the Expensive zone. Its Bargain Score is 51. Rather than a recommendation, the label is a reading of where Bitcoin's price and the wider market sit against the model's rules at this moment, and because the Fear & Greed value and the daily RSI both update at midnight UTC, just after midnight is when it is most likely to change. The 2-dot meter beside it shows where that zone sits on the five-step scale, from one dot for Expensive to five for Deep discount.

Bitcoin has had one earlier fall of 50% or more in our price history: after its $124,659 peak in October 2025 it fell 53% and has not closed above that level since. Those are the only data points we have for this coin, which is too few to say anything reliable about the next recovery, since market conditions, supply and competition are different each cycle and some coins never regain a previous high.

The model starts from Bitcoin's full range, its all-time high of $126,080 divided by its all-time low of $67.81, which is roughly 1,859-fold. It shrinks that multiple with a decay factor, on the assumption that each cycle is smaller than the last, and applies it from the low. For Bitcoin that reduced repeat would not reach the old high, so the targets are anchored just above it instead, at $132,384, $144,992 and $163,904, which puts the low scenario 59% above today's price. They describe what a reduced repeat of the past would look like and say nothing about whether that will happen. Cryptoassets are high risk, and you should be prepared to lose all the money you put into them.

Because the score and the zone measure different things. The score blends price distress, sentiment, positioning, resilience and supply into one number, while the zone checks whether specific conditions line up, such as Fear & Greed crossing a threshold or the RSI reaching oversold or overbought levels. The sell-side rules are checked before the buy-side ones, and with Fear & Greed at 57 (Greed) and Bitcoin's RSI at 50, at least two of the conditions for the lower end of Fair value are met, which places Bitcoin there whatever its score.