Bitcoin price gains happen in just five days a year

The Roundup is Rhino’s weekly read for people who’d rather build a process than predict a price.

Out of 365 days in a year, only a tiny handful decide whether the whole year is a win or a loss for Bitcoin investors. And if you’re not holding Bitcoin on those exact days, you miss almost all of the price gains. 

Before we run the numbers, here’s a spoiler: they’re brutal and hard to believe. 

In 2011, Bitcoin returned a whopping 1,474% in gains. Strip out the ten best days and investors are left with a meager 2.2%. 

In 2019, Bitcoin nearly doubled, rising around 94%. Take away its ten best days, however, and that flips to a 40% loss.

Even this year, Bitcoin is down about 9%. But if you’d missed out on its five best days, the world’s top crypto has suffered a 36% wipeout. 

Across 11 of the last 18 years, removing just 10 days turns a winning year into a losing one.

Tom Lee, renowned Wall Street strategist and Bitcoin and Ethereum permabull, calls it the “Rule of the 10 best days.”

“Bitcoin makes all of its gains in the 10 best days,” he posted on X in late August.

Annualized returns since 2014, according to Lee, offer up Bitcoin gains of around 157%. But if you take away those top ten days, you’re left holding a 14% loss. 

Tired of trying to time Bitcoin? Learn why time in the market beats timing it:

Here’s why this matters for you, dear reader.

To time Bitcoin, you’d have to buy the moment before a rally starts and be back in before the bounce. Those moves often come with zero warning.

Just look at February. Bitcoin dropped 14% on the 5th, then jumped 12% the very next day. Anyone who panic-sold on Thursday had barely one day to get back in before the recovery took off without them. 

And you just watched it happen again last month. Bitcoin went to $80,000 from the low $60,000s in a matter of days. If you were on the sidelines waiting for a cleaner entry, it never came. It just ran right by you. 

There’s a catch, though. The worst days cluster too, so holding means enduring large price drops. But that’s the deal, and history is pretty blunt about it. Hold Bitcoin for three years, and the odds you’re underwater have historically dropped below 1%. 

Time doesn’t just smooth the stack — it stacks the deck. 

So the takeaway isn't “trade smarter.” It’s that the whole game is being there. Own Bitcoin through the periods where it doesn’t seem to move so you’re holding for the handful of days that actually pay. 

You can’t time the days that matter. Here’s the approach that doesn’t need you to:

Catch you next week,

The Rhino Research team