How long do Bitcoin rallies last? 51 rallies measured

In 51 completed Bitcoin rallies of 20% or more on Coinbase, from July 2015 to October 2026, the median rally took 26 days from its low to its high and gained 48.23%. Winning streaks of single days are much shorter. The median run of consecutive up days was 2 days, and the longest was 12.

Both are past cases, not a forecast. They describe rallies that are already over.

How do you measure how long a rally lasts?

There are two common ways, and they give very different answers.

Up streak. Count the days in a row where the daily close was above the day before. A day's close is the last price of that UTC day.

Swing rally. Follow price from a low to a high. A rally ends at the first daily close 10% below its running high. A low only counts once price has closed 10% above it. We kept rallies that gained 20% or more from low to high. We call this one a swing because it is measured by price, not by day counts.

How long are daily up streaks?

We counted every run of up days on Coinbase BTC-USD daily closes from July 20, 2015 to October 19, 2026. There were 1,080 runs, and 52.30% of all days were up days. The average run was 1.99 days and the median was 2.

We also asked a fair question: what would runs look like if each day were an independent coin flip with the same chance of being up? Here are the counts of runs by exact length.

How long are daily up streaks?

Run length (days)	Real runs	Coin-flip runs
1	531	515.16
2	297	269.43
3	125	140.91
4	57	73.70
5	36	38.54
6	14	20.16
7	10	10.54
8	7	5.51
9	1	2.88
10 or more	2	3.16

The two columns are close. Bitcoin had a few more one- and two-day runs than coin flips would give, and fewer runs of three or four days. Overall, up streaks look much like luck. The longest was 12 days, from April 23 to May 4, 2017.

Ethereum was similar. On Coinbase ETH-USD (from May 23, 2016), 1,004 runs had a median of 1 day, and 526 lasted a single day. The longest was 10 days, from December 31, 2017 to January 9, 2018.

How long do 20% rallies last?

Here the picture is very different. These rallies run for weeks.

How long do 20% rallies last?

Measure	Coinbase BTC-USD	Coinbase ETH-USD	Binance BTCUSDT	Binance ETHUSDT
Data starts	July 20, 2015	May 23, 2016	Sept 8, 2019	Nov 27, 2019
Completed rallies of 20% or more	51	80	29	45
Median days, low to high	26	16.5	29	20
Middle half of rallies (days)	13 to 51	8 to 29.75	16 to 51	11 to 37
Median gain	48.23%	40.31%	36.52%	37.57%
Middle half of rallies (gain)	26.54% to 85.94%	25.82% to 74.75%	25.19% to 62.22%	25.47% to 71.73%
Longest rally (days)	155	91	127	91
Biggest gain	195.43%	189.65%	137.03%	134.18%

The Binance rows are USDT perps, which are futures contracts that never expire. Because each market starts on a different date, the columns cover different years. Do not compare them as if they covered the same time.

The middle half means the range between the 25th and 75th percentile. A quarter of rallies were shorter than the lower number, and a quarter were longer than the upper one. For Coinbase Bitcoin that is a wide spread: from 13 days up to 51 days. The median hides this. A few very long rallies also pull the average (mean) up to 39.47 days, well above the median of 26.

Not every rise became a big rally. Coinbase Bitcoin had 92 finished swings, each at least 10% off its low. Of those, 51 went on to gain 20% or more.

What were the longest Bitcoin rallies?

Here are the five longest finished rallies on Coinbase BTC-USD.

What were the longest Bitcoin rallies?

Low	High	Days	Gain
Aug 2, 2016	Jan 4, 2017	155	110.30%
Jan 31, 2016	Jun 16, 2016	137	109.20%
Apr 8, 2025	Aug 13, 2025	127	61.79%
Sept 11, 2023	Jan 8, 2024	119	86.84%
Sept 6, 2024	Dec 17, 2024	102	96.73%

Longest did not mean biggest. The 127-day rally in 2025 gained 61.79%, less than the 102-day rally in 2024 that gained 96.73%. The biggest gain of all was 195.43%.

One rally was not finished when our data stopped. It started June 30, 2026 and was up 47.97% at its high on September 21, 2026. It had not yet hit a 10% pullback, so we left it out.

We did not count rallies year by year, so we cannot say whether rallies got shorter or longer over time. See Bitcoin's recovery times after big drops for the other side of the cycle.

Does a long winning streak end soon?

You might guess that after several up days, a pullback is due. We checked what came next on Coinbase BTC-USD. (For the opposite case, see red days in a row.)

Does a long winning streak end soon?

Group	Cases	Higher 1 day later (all days)	Higher 7 days later (all days)	Median 7-day move (all days)
4th up day in a row	127	55.12% (52.30%)	55.12% (54.59%)	+0.61% (+0.68%)
6th or later up day in a row	71 days, from 34 streaks	52.11% (52.30%)	67.61% (54.59%)	+3.91% (+0.68%)

After the 4th up day, the results were about the same as on any other day. After the 6th and later up days, the 7-day result looked better. But that group is only 34 streaks, and each streak adds several overlapping days. On Binance BTCUSDT the same group was higher 7 days later in 60.98% of cases (41 days from 21 streaks), against 52.66% on all days.

We looked at many streak lengths, directions and time windows. With that many checks, a few will look strong by chance. We read this as no sign of an early end, not as a sign of a longer run. For how cases can split, see when past crypto cases disagree and our look at what followed a 10% weekly drop.

What does this data not show?

• It does not predict how long today's rally will last. Every rally here is already over.
• It uses hindsight. You only know a low was a low after price rises 10%, and a high after it falls 10%.
• The 10% pullback rule is our choice. A 5% or 20% rule would give different lengths.
• Rallies are not independent. They share the same bull markets and bear markets.
• It does not count rallies by year, so it cannot show a trend in length.

How we measured this

We used Coinbase daily closes for BTC-USD from July 20, 2015 (4,110 daily bars) and ETH-USD from May 23, 2016, plus Binance BTCUSDT and ETHUSDT from late 2019, through October 19, 2026. An up day is a close strictly above the day before. We measured runs between those days only when days were consecutive. For rallies, we followed closing prices from each confirmed low to the highest close before price fell 10% below its running high, and kept finished rallies that gained 20% or more. We compared up-streak counts with what independent coin flips with the same up share would give. We used no fees, since no trade was tested.

Try this in Comparand

With Comparand connected to your AI app, you can check rally lengths yourself:

• "Which exchanges and bar sizes do you serve right now?" The tool is venue_coverage. It lists the exchanges and prediction markets Comparand serves besides Hyperliquid, and which datasets and bar sizes each has. It is free on every key.
• "Get daily bars for Coinbase BTC-USD from September 11, 2023 to January 8, 2024. Count the longest run of up days, and tell me the gain from the low to the high." The tool is venue_bars. It returns open, high, low, close and volume for completed daily bars, and it is free.

Your agent does the counting. The tools return bars, not a rally report. You can also try 3 coins free, read the tool docs, or see pricing.

The short version

• In 51 completed Coinbase Bitcoin rallies of 20% or more, the median took 26 days and gained 48.23%. The middle half ran from 13 to 51 days.
• Daily up streaks were short: a median of 2 days, with 531 of 1,080 lasting one day, and a longest of 12. Their counts were close to what coin flips would give.
• Ethereum rallies were shorter: a median of 16.5 days across 80 rallies, with a median gain of 40.31%.
• After a long streak, our data shows no clear early end and no reliable continuation.
• Past cases, not a forecast.