Concept
Crypto Cycle Models
Crypto Cycle Models, also known as pi-cycle top, stock-to-flow — discredited but famous, are Breadth, Sentiment & External Data concepts. The Library holds 4 implementations, each one a working definition you can pull into Quant.
Top Crypto Cycle Models indicators
4 total
What are Crypto Cycle Models?
Crypto cycle models are frameworks for estimating where Bitcoin, and by extension the wider crypto market, sits inside its multi-year boom and bust sequence, which has historically tracked the roughly four-year halving cadence. Instead of generating trade signals, they estimate phase: accumulation, markup, euphoria, decline, bottom. The genre includes the pi-cycle top (a cross of the 111-day SMA above two times the 350-day SMA that landed near several prior peaks), logarithmic regression and power-law growth curves fitted to all of price history, the famous and now widely criticized stock-to-flow scarcity model, and on-chain valuation bands such as MVRV.
Every model in this family deserves statistical humility. Bitcoin has completed only a handful of full cycles, so any curve fitted to that history is trained on a tiny sample, and models are often refit as new data arrives, which flatters their track record. Structural change (spot ETFs, institutional flows, the shrinking supply impact of each halving) may bend or break past geometry. The honest use is context: a cycle model can say price is historically stretched or historically depressed relative to its own past, not that a top or bottom is due on a date.
How traders use it
- As a macro filter over faster tools: lean toward accumulation-side tactics when price sits in a model's lower bands and toward de-risking when it stretches far above the long-run curve, letting shorter-term structure handle the actual entries.
- As a top-watch checklist rather than a sell trigger: extreme readings (a pi-cycle cross, price several bands above the regression corridor, stretched on-chain valuation) argue for tightening stops and scaling out, not for shorting on sight.
- For DCA planning: accumulation-band models give long-horizon buyers a framework for scaling purchase size with cycle depth instead of buying a fixed amount regardless of context.
- As one voice in a cross-check, never alone: a cycle-model extreme gains weight when independent families, such as on-chain metrics like SOPR, funding conditions, and exchange flows, say the same thing.
Crypto Cycle Models vs related concepts
Power-law Growth Curves: A specific member of the family: a straight-line fit to log price against log time. Cycle models is the umbrella term; power-law curves are one way of drawing the long-run corridor within it.
On-chain Valuation Suite: On-chain models value the network from blockchain data (cost basis, realized value, holder behavior), while cycle models in the narrow sense work from price and time alone. Many dashboards blend both.
Long-horizon Calendar Cycles: Calendar-cycle work looks for recurring seasonal or multi-year rhythms in any market. Crypto cycle models are anchored to a specific supply mechanism, the Bitcoin halving, rather than to the calendar itself.
More Crypto Cycle Models implementations
Related concepts · Crypto-native
Concept family
Breadth, Sentiment & External Data
63 concepts mapped · 61 in the Library
Crypto Cycle Models FAQ
Do crypto cycle models still work?
Unknown, and unknowable in advance. They are fitted to very few completed cycles, and each cycle has broken some earlier assumption: the 2021 double top and the 2024 pre-halving all-time high both defied patterns older models relied on. Use them as context for how stretched price is, and require independent confirmation before acting.
What happened to the stock-to-flow model?
Stock-to-flow priced Bitcoin from scarcity alone, dividing existing supply by annual new issuance. It became famous for its aggressive 2020-2021 projections, then price spent 2022 trading far below the model's trajectory. Many analysts now consider it discredited, and it survives mainly as a case study in curve fitting on a small sample.
What is the pi-cycle top?
A timing study that fires when the 111-day moving average crosses above two times the 350-day moving average. Crosses landed within days of the 2013, 2017, and April 2021 peaks, but the November 2021 all-time high came with no signal. A close historical fit on a few events is suggestive, not a reliable rule.
Build Crypto Cycle Models your way.
Quant writes, tests, and refines it with you — then it runs on LuxAlgo charting or ports to TradingView.