Cycle dashboard/Indicators/Pi Cycle Top
Bitcoin on-chain indicator
Pi Cycle Top indicator for Bitcoin
The Pi Cycle Top is a moving-average configuration: it fires when Bitcoin's 111-day average rises above twice its 350-day average. Rather than publishing a binary flag that is off almost all the time, CryptoTIDE publishes the ratio between the two lines, so you can see how far away a crossing is on any given day. 1.00 is the crossing.
Reading the latest public snapshot. This page shows the raw Pi Cycle Top value in its own unit, not a normalised score.
- BTC price that day
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Public data refreshes every six hours.
Bitcoin Pi Cycle Top proximity, full history with every crossing shaded
loading history…Pi Cycle Top (left axis, raw units) BTC price (right axis, log) shaded: 111DMA above 2 × 350DMA0.75 · 0.90 · 1.00 reference levels
Loading the public daily series…
What the Pi Cycle Top is, and exactly how it is computed
Two simple moving averages of the daily close, and one ratio between them. Both come from the free CoinMetrics
Community PriceUSD series.
The name comes from the window lengths: 350 ÷ 111 = 3.153, close to π. That is a numerological coincidence rather than a derivation, and the original author never claimed otherwise.
Why a ratio instead of a flag
A binary "crossed / not crossed" field is off for years at a time and tells a reader nothing about whether the configuration is developing or nowhere near. The ratio is continuous, so the same data supports "0.39 — far away" as well as "0.98 — very close". The Cycle Compass uses it in the trend/timing family, where 0.90 counts as extension evidence alongside the Mayer Multiple.
How the levels are read
| Band | What it describes | Role in CryptoTIDE | Share of all days since 2010 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Below 0.75 | The averages are far apart; no configuration developing. | No family flag | — |
| 0.75 – 0.90 | The short average is closing on the long one. | Trend/timing family on watch | — |
| 0.90 – 1.00 | Near-cross band. | Trend/timing extension family active | 13.9% (at or above 0.90) |
| 1.00 and above | The crossing itself. | Top-risk pressure flash level | 8.5% |
8.5% of all days is not a rare event in the way the indicator's reputation implies. Those days are concentrated into five episodes, listed below.
What every Bitcoin cycle actually printed
Every crossing in the public series, with what happened to price afterwards. This is the whole sample — there is no sixth observation being left out.
| Crossing period | Length | BTC at first cross | Cycle high that followed | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Apr – 7 Oct 2011 | 164 days | $1.90 | $29.03 on 8 Jun 2011 | 42 days later, price +1,428% |
| 6 Apr – 6 Aug 2013 | 123 days | $143.08 | $230.68 on 9 Apr 2013 (an interim high) | 3 days later, price +61% |
| 5 Dec 2013 – 26 Mar 2014 | 112 days | $1,027.41 | $1,134.93 on 4 Dec 2013 | 1 day earlier |
| 16 Dec 2017 – 3 Mar 2018 | 78 days | $19,640.51 | $19,640.51 on 16 Dec 2017 | same day |
| 12 – 22 Apr 2021 | 11 days | $59,905.94 | $67,541.76 on 8 Nov 2021 | 210 days later, price +12.7% |
"Cycle high that followed" is the highest close in that market cycle after the first crossing day.
The 2017 cross landing on the exact day of the all-time high is the observation the indicator is famous for. It is also the best of the five. In 2011 the cross came six weeks before the top and price rose more than fifteenfold in between. In 2013 it fired twice, in April and again in December. In 2021 it fired at what turned out to be the first peak of a double top; Bitcoin made a higher high seven months later. One same-day hit, one six-week miss, one double fire and one early call on a double top is the entire record.
Below is the same series expressed as the peak proximity reached in each cycle.
| Cycle | Peak proximity | BTC price then | Post-peak trough | BTC price then |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 cycle | 1.462 2011-08-01 | $13.02 | 0.544 2011-11-18 | $2.11 |
| 2013 cycle | 1.230 2013-06-08 | $109 | 0.354 2015-01-14 | $176 |
| 2017 cycle | 1.059 2018-01-24 | $11,226 | 0.375 2018-11-25 | $3,947 |
| 2021 cycle | 1.004 2021-04-17 | $60,281 | 0.286 2022-09-30 | $19,435 |
| 2025 cycle (open) | 0.736 2024-05-31 | $67,378 | 0.383 so far 2026-05-21 | $77,595 |
Cycle windows run low-to-low, using the same boundaries as the dashboard's cycle map: 18 Nov 2011, 14 Jan 2015, 15 Dec 2018 and 9 Nov 2022. The trough column is the lowest reading after that cycle's peak. The table is recomputed in your browser from the published series, so it stays correct as new data arrives.
Peak-to-peak, Pi Cycle proximity has fallen every cycle: 1.462 → 1.230 → 1.059 → 1.004 → 0.736. Each cycle top has printed a lower extreme than the one before it, so a level that was ordinary in 2013 has not been reached since.
The most important line in that table is the last one. In the current cycle the indicator has never crossed: its highest reading was 0.736 on 31 May 2024, and it did not come close again through the October 2025 price high. An indicator that requires a doubling of one moving average over another needs the kind of vertical move that Bitcoin's falling volatility has been making rarer with each cycle. The margin was already thin in 2021 — the cross held for eleven days and peaked at 1.004, barely over the line.
Limits worth knowing before you lean on this
Five observations. That is the sample. Nothing about a 111-day window, a 350-day window or a multiplier of 2 is derived from Bitcoin's mechanics; the parameters fit a short early history and were never re-derived afterwards.
It is drifting out of range. The peak proximity has fallen every cycle and did not reach 0.75 in the current one. If volatility keeps compressing, the configuration may simply stop occurring — which would not make the indicator wrong so much as silent.
A cross is not a peak. On the record above, the gap between the first cross and the cycle high ranges from 210 days late to one day early, with price moves in between from +12.7% to +1,428%. "It called the top" is true of exactly one of the five episodes.
Questions people ask about the Pi Cycle Top
What is the Pi Cycle Top indicator?
The Pi Cycle Top is a Bitcoin moving-average configuration in which the 111-day simple moving average rises above twice the 350-day simple moving average. CryptoTIDE publishes it as a continuous proximity ratio — 111DMA divided by 2 × 350DMA — where 1.00 is the crossing itself, so the approach is visible rather than just the event.
Why is it called the Pi Cycle?
Because 350 divided by 111 equals 3.153, which is close to π. The window lengths were chosen empirically to fit Bitcoin's early price history and the coincidence with π was noticed afterwards. It is a name, not a derivation.
Has the Pi Cycle Top crossed in the current Bitcoin cycle?
No. In the cycle that began at the November 2022 low the proximity ratio peaked at 0.736 on 31 May 2024 and never approached 1.00, including through the October 2025 price high. The previous crossings were in 2011, twice in 2013 and 2014, in December 2017 and for eleven days in April 2021.
How reliable has the Pi Cycle Top been?
There are five crossing episodes in the whole public series. One landed on the exact day of the 2017 all-time high; one came 42 days before the 2011 peak with price rising more than fifteenfold in between; 2013 produced two separate crossings; and the April 2021 cross preceded a higher high seven months later. That is the complete record, and it is too small a sample to support a reliability claim in either direction.
Related Bitcoin cycle indicators
No single gauge carries a cycle read on its own. CryptoTIDE groups correlated metrics into families so that four views of the same realized-cap data cannot vote four times — the reasoning is on the methodology page, and the combined live read is on the Bitcoin cycle dashboard.