A widely shared seasonality snapshot is making the rounds ahead of month-end: a Coinglass heat map of Bitcoin’s monthly returns, reposted by trader Daan Crypto Trades. The table spans 2013–2025 and shows November as the statistical outlier in Bitcoin’s calendar—both for eye-popping gains and for sharp drawdowns in certain years.
“November is Bitcoin’s best month based on historical performance. By far,” Daan wrote on X, pointing to an average November change of +46.02% across the dataset. That figure is visibly distorted by November 2013’s +449.35% surge, the single largest monthly move on the board. He added: “The average gain over all these months is +46.02%. But this is heavily skewed by a single monthly gain in November 2013. Bitcoin went up +449.35%!! that month.”
The raw counts back up the reputation without the hyperbole. Out of the 12 Novembers listed (2013–2024), 8 finished green—2013 (+449.35%), 2014 (+12.82%), 2015 (+19.27%), 2016 (+5.42%), 2017 (+53.48%), 2020 (+42.95%), 2023 (+8.81%), and 2024 (+37.29%)—while 4 were negative—2018 (-36.57%), 2019 (-17.27%), 2021 (-7.11%), and 2022 (-16.23%).
The median November change sits at +10.82%, a more conservative central tendency that dampens the 2013 effect. Excluding 2013 entirely, the simple average for November drops to roughly +9.35% across the remaining 11 years, underscoring how one month can skew mean-based seasonality.
Context from the broader table matters. November’s average is the highest of any month on Coinglass’s grid, ahead of October’s +20.30% average, while December shows a far more mixed profile with a +4.75% average but a -3.22% median—an imbalance consistent with outlier-driven months.
September, long maligned by traders, retains a negative average (-3.08%) over the full period. The 2024 row itself captures the push-and-pull of this cycle’s narrative: double-digit gains in February, March, May, October, and November, offset by meaningful drawdowns in April, June, and August, and a negative December print to close the year (-2.85%).
The Coinglass grid cannot timestamp intramonth highs or lows, but the clustering of major pivots into the final two months of the year is consistent with the market’s folklore and with the returns pattern that shows both exceptionally strong up months and some of the cycle’s most punishing down months in this window.
November’s distribution spans the widest extremes on record—from +449.35% at the top to -36.57% on the downside—with a two-thirds hit rate for green months and a median gain in the low double digits. December, by contrast, has produced both cycle tops and cycle bottoms despite a modest average, a reminder that average and median statistics can obscure the path risk that defines Bitcoin’s fourth quarter.
At press time, BTC traded at $114,487.
