Summer is generally a fun time of year. The sun is up longer, the weather is warmer, and you might just get to go on a vacation somewhere you’ve been dreaming of. But when it comes to Bitcoin’s price, summer is a bit of an odd time.
This year, in 2024, Bitcoin hasn’t been doing very well since the start of June, though it has had a decent July after seeing a dip to below $55,000 and a rebound up to $64,000 or so.
The lack of big movement this summer may be a surprise to Bitcoin maximalists, but this is fairly commonplace for the king of crypto. In order to analyze Bitcoin’s summer price action, we’re going to look at the past few years of its price movement, and take a little bit of a dive into what tends to happen after the summer.
Bitcoin Price Action During Summer for Past Three Years
To get a clearer picture of Bitcoin’s price history during the summer months, we’re going to look at its price action for 2021, 2022, and 2023. Though we can definitely go back further than that, the past few years is when Bitcoin has become a more legitimized investment, especially considering the money printing that happened in 2020 which saw a crypto boom.
We’re going to define summer as the months of July-Sep, though summer technically starts at the end of June with the summer equinox, so June will still be mentioned when relevant. For each year, we’ll look at the returns by month, and the overall price movement during those months.
Bitcoin Price Summer 2021
In the summer of 2021, Bitcoin was coming off of a bad May and June, where the combined return was -41%. This is probably why July and August were such good months for Bitcoin, with a 18% return in July and another 13% gained in August. Bitcoin then lost 7% in September before exploding in the fall/October.
Price wise, Bitcoin was about $33k USD at the beginning of July and by the end of August it was $47k. By the end of September it was closer to $40k.
Bitcoin Price Summer 2022
The summer of 2022 wasn’t nearly as kind to Bitcoin as the summer of 2021, as it rolled into July at about $20k, having had a -17% return in April, a -15% return in May, and then a whopping -37% in June. This led to July being a rebound month with a return of over 16%, but then August was another -14% return, followed by September with another -3% return.
Having started July around $20k, Bitcoin reached as high as $23k by the end of the month. Bitcoin then finished August back around $20k and dropping a couple thousand from there to about $18k before October saw a 5% return that pushed it back up to $20k again.
Bitcoin Price Summer 2023
2023 was a bit of a weird year for Bitcoin as it was coming out of a huge slump following the collapse of FTX exchange in the fall of 2022. Then in March of 2023, a couple regional banks in the US collapsed, which gave Bitcoin a return of 23% in March that year. It held pretty well through April but then had a -7% return in May and a 12% return in June. These pre-summer gains were all essentially given back, with -4% in July, -11% in August, and modest rebound of 3% in September before a 28% explosion in October.
July 2023 saw Bitcoin’s price around $32k, but by the end of August it was about $25k. Bitcoin ended September at about $27k. By the end of October though, it was $35k.
Flat Summers Lead to Uptober
Though the monthly returns for the summer months are fairly low, and especially September as we approach the fall, this tends to lead to what many in the sector refer to as “Uptober”. Uptober refers to the month of October where crypto prices tend to just go up. This is certainly true if you look at the monthly returns for Bitcoin in October over the past few years.
As you can see in the image above, In 2023, the monthly return on Bitcoin for October was over 28%. In 2022, it was a little over 5%, and in 2021, it was just under 40%.
It’s worth noting that in 2022, FTX exchange collapsed in the fall, which is why Bitcoin didn’t have as good of an October that year.
Bitcoin’s Best Months Historically
Now that we’ve discussed Bitcoin’s summer price action over the past few years, it would be good to take a look at what months are typically the best for it. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s not actually October that has historically had the best returns for Bitcoin, but in fact November.
Over the course of Bitcoin’s history, October has had an average return of over 22%. But for November, the average return is a whopping 46%.
It’s worth noting though that one of those Novembers was 446% in 2013, which is skewing the data. Most Novembers have actually seen negative returns for Bitcoin other than a few.
On a median basis, it’s actually October with the best returns, with 27% compared to just an 8% median for November. In the past 11 years, Bitcoin has only had two negative return months, with one being -3% and the other being -13%.
Closing Thoughts: Patience is Key
Bitcoin has historically good and bad summers, though the majority of them are fairly flat overall. This is due to a variety of factors, such as summer often being a time where investment is less popular as people are out doing things. It’s fairly clear though, that if Bitcoin has a poor summer of price action, it tends to have a big fall as we enter October.
