
November on average the best-performing month for Bitcoin, January poorest
Historical price-action dating back to 2012 suggests January is the poorest-performing month for Bitcoin, while November may bode best for the bulls.

Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate
Historical price-action dating back to 2012 suggests January is the poorest-performing month for Bitcoin, while November may bode best for the bulls.
Research shared Twitter user @Bitdealer_ shows that average returns for each monthly change in Bitcoinâs price since 2012, calculating seven-and-a-half years of data from January 2012 to June 2019.
January usually closes in the redâbut only just
With five negative-returning and three positive-returning months since 2012, Bitcoinâs median January return is -0.18 percentâthe only month of the year with an averaged loss.
The remaining 11 months of the year have all seen positive gains for the top cryptocurrency by market capitalization, based on total averages.
Still, March not typically a winner
While January winds up the poorest-performing month based on aggregated returns, March is in fact more likely to close at a loss with only 2013 and 2019 closing in the green.
The net average appears to have been inflated by March 2013âs increase from $33.53 to $96.15âthe 186.78 percent monthly gain being the third-largest on record for Bitcoin.
November bodes well for bulls, but the jury may be out
Aside from November 2018âs dramatic 37.01 percent decline, the month has posted positive gains every year since 2012 and has by far been the best-performing with a median 75.58Â percent increase.
Despite Bitcoinâs supposed non-correlation with the stock market, the coin would appear to be forming seasonal tendenciesâthe propensity for an asset to undergo predicted changes in price at a certain time of year.

The âJanuary effectâ, for instance, is the well-formed hypothesis that stocks tend to rally in the first month of the year. Bitcoinâs apparent reverse-January effect would give the impression that the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and daily trading volume is in fact negatively-correlated with stocks.
It must be said that seasonality is an emerging field of research within Bitcoinâs limited data set, however, with less than a decade of comprehensible price-action available compared to more established asset classes.
Findings would likely be corrupted by analyzing price pre-2012, when the handful of primitive exchanges in existence dealt with significant security breaches and dubious price discoveryâarguably the most infamous example being June 19 2011âs âflash crashâ, when BTC plummeted from $32 to $0.01 on the then-dominant Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox.