Pi Cycle Top — Bitcoin Cycle Overheating Indicator

What Pi Cycle Top is

The indicator uses two simple moving averages of bitcoin daily closes: a short one over 111 days and a long one over 350 days multiplied by two. While the short one stays below, the market is far from overheated. The moment it crosses above, the indicator fires — historically that happened close to cycle tops. The name comes from the arithmetic: 350 / 111 ≈ 3.153, close to π. The idea is due to Philip Swift, 2019.

How to read the page

• The number on top is the distance between the averages in percent. Deep negative means overheating is far away; approaching zero means the averages are converging. Zero itself is the signal.
• The chart shows the price and both averages on a logarithmic scale — on a linear one the early years would collapse into a line at the bottom. Dashed marks are the signal days, and hovering shows the values for any date.
• The signal table shows what the price did a month, three months and six months after each crossing, the high and low of the following year, and how many days the overheated state lasted before the reverse crossing.

Why the sample is too small for conclusions

In the whole history of bitcoin the indicator fired a handful of times, and our daily-close database contains two of them: 17 December 2017 (the day of the cycle top) and 12 April 2021 (two days before the top). Two more crossings happened in 2013, before our price history begins. Four observations are not statistics: each occurred in a market of different size and composition, and the next cycle owes them nothing. The table describes the past; it does not forecast the future.

What the indicator does not tell you

Pi Cycle Top says nothing about how much upside is left before the top, how deep the decline after it will be, or how long that decline will take. It gives no buy signals and stays silent for most of the cycle. It is computed from our own BTC daily closes — the same data behind the rainbow chart and the halving countdown. This page is informational and is not investment advice.