Bitcoin Rainbow Chart
No predictive value
The Rainbow Chart draws Bitcoin’s price on a logarithmic scale and lays coloured bands over it, from “fire sale” at the bottom to “maximum bubble” at the top. The colour under today’s price is presented as a verdict on whether Bitcoin is cheap or expensive.
- Bitcoin price (monthly close)
- Fitted on data to 2017 (slope 5.728)
- Fitted on data to 2021 (slope 5.889)
- Fitted on all data to 2026 (slope 5.652)
Our own calculation on Coin Metrics Community Data (BTC reference rate, daily, through 14 August 2026). Three regressions of log(price) on log(age), identical in method and differing only in where the data was cut off. The centre line of a rainbow-style chart is a curve of this kind; the coloured bands are offsets from it.
How it is built
A regression curve is fitted through the historical price on a log scale, and the bands are fixed offsets above and below that curve. Nothing enters the calculation except past price and elapsed time — no demand, no supply, no flows, no rates. The colours and their names are chosen by the author, not derived from anything.
Our verdict
No predictive value — and, unusually, its author agrees. As a way of showing that Bitcoin has risen over time on a log scale, it is a fine illustration. As a guide to what price should be, it is a curve fitted to the past with coloured stripes on it, and the current version refits itself daily.
The record
Every line below is our own calculation on the public price series — reproducible where it is our own calculation, and linked to its primary source where it is quotation.
| When | What the chart says | What the data shows | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-12 | A regression curve fitted to all price data available at the end of 2017 — the centre line a rainbow-style chart would have been drawn around at that moment. | Extended without refitting, that line reads $24,361 for November 2021. Bitcoin was $64,756 — 2.7 times higher, far outside any band drawn around it. | Moonkelp’s own analysis |
| 2021-12 | The identical fit, recalculated four years later on data through 2021, has a visibly different slope: 5.889 against 5.728. | The curve moved to where the price had gone. A chart redrawn this way is never seen to be wrong, because the evidence of the miss is replaced by the new fit. | Moonkelp’s own analysis |
| 2022-09 | When price fell through the bottom of the rainbow in September 2022, the chart was left alone. | Almost. Comparing the page source in two archived snapshots — 16 September and 1 October 2022 — the nine band coefficients are byte-for-byte identical, and a tenth band has been added beneath them. The author describes the decision himself: “I left the formula for the curve as it was and just added another color. Indigo / violet was missing from a proper rainbow anyway!” | Bitcoin Rainbow Chart, blockchaincenter.net — page source, 16 September and 1 October 2022 · archived |
| 2022-11-21 | The bands are a fixed model, so the chart records how price behaved against it. | On 21 November 2022 the whole family was replaced. The last archived snapshot carrying the 2014 formula is 21 November 06:46 UTC; the next one, 30 November, carries new bands. Every band moved down: at that date to 0.61–0.75 times its old value, and for August 2026 to 0.41–0.60 times. The old chart’s “HODL” line for today read $369,520; the new one reads $184,271. | Bitcoin Rainbow Chart, blockchaincenter.net — page source before and after the V2 refit · archived |
| 2022-11-21 | A refit is an admission that the old curve failed. | The author says exactly that, in public, on the page: “the original Bitcoin Rainbow Chart is dead! … after a brutal 2022 in the crypto industry it was just no longer valid.” The new version is described as one that “explains every move so far (the old one had a couple of wicks outside the rainbow)” — which is the mechanism this page is about, stated as a feature. | Bitcoin Rainbow Chart, blockchaincenter.net — page source before and after the V2 refit · archived |
| 2026-05 | The 2017 fit, still extended, reads $137,390 for May 2026. | Bitcoin was $76,620 — 44 per cent below the line. The same curve was too low in 2021 and too high in 2026. | Moonkelp’s own analysis |
| 2026-08 | A model can be fixed, or it can fit the data. It cannot be both. | The chart no longer pretends otherwise. Its current version “calculates the curve dynamically in real-time by fitting a Power Law regression across Bitcoin’s entire daily price history”, reporting a 94.3 per cent fit — a curve that is refitted every day it is looked at. So does the disclaimer the operator puts under it: “You can not predict the price of Bitcoin with a rainbow! … There is no scientific basis underpinning it.” | Bitcoin Rainbow Chart, blockchaincenter.net — current version and its own version history · archived |
Why the method does not hold
01
A curve fitted to the price cannot forecast the price. The bands are drawn so that the historical line runs through the middle of them — that is the fit, not a finding. Any monotonically rising series produces a similar picture.
02
The chart has no falsification condition. There is no price at which its author would have to say the model was wrong; there is only a band that price is currently in. A claim that cannot fail cannot inform.
03
When price does leave the bands, the fit is recalculated and the bands move. The chart then reads as if it had been right all along, and the record of the miss disappears with the old curve.
The strongest case for it
The strongest defence is that the Rainbow Chart was never meant as a forecast — it is a mood picture that says “historically, buying in the blue bands worked out.” Its author makes that defence himself, in writing, under the chart, and he has kept every version change on the record rather than quietly swapping curves. That deserves to be said plainly: the openness here is better than the field’s norm. What it does not do is rescue the chart as a forecast. A curve that is refitted whenever price leaves it describes where price has been, and an honest label on that does not turn it into knowledge about where price is going.
What to look at instead
If the question is “is Bitcoin stretched relative to something real?”, two gauges answer it without predicting anything: MVRV compares price to what holders actually paid, and the Mayer Multiple compares it to its own 200-day trend. Both describe a present state and neither claims to know the future.
Questions
Is the Bitcoin Rainbow Chart accurate?
It is accurate about the past by construction, because the curve is fitted to the past. It is not accurate about the future: a curve of exactly this kind, fitted on data through 2017 and then left alone, sat 2.7 times below Bitcoin’s November 2021 price and 44 per cent above its May 2026 price. What keeps the chart looking right is that it gets refitted.
How is the Rainbow Chart calculated?
A regression line is fitted through the historical price on a logarithmic scale, and the coloured bands are fixed offsets above and below that line. The only inputs are past price and elapsed time. The band names — from “fire sale” to “maximum bubble” — are editorial labels, not outputs of the calculation.
What would prove the Rainbow Chart wrong?
Nothing, as it is normally used, and that is the objection. Price leaving the bands is treated as a reason to refit the bands rather than as a failed prediction. This is not a suspicion — it happened on 21 November 2022, when the 2014 formula was replaced with one fitted through 2022 and every band dropped by roughly a third. To the operator’s credit it was announced rather than slipped in, and the reason given was that the old curve “was just no longer valid”. That is what a failed forecast looks like when the response is a new curve.
Has the Rainbow Chart been changed since it was published?
Twice, both documented by its operator. In September 2022 an extra band was added below the existing ones, with the nine band coefficients left untouched — verifiable by comparing the page source in archived snapshots from 16 September and 1 October 2022. On 21 November 2022 the formula itself was replaced (“V2”), moving every band down to roughly 0.6 times its previous level at that date. The version running today is described as a “Dynamic Rainbow Chart” that refits its curve in real time across the whole price history.
What should I look at instead?
Gauges that describe a present state rather than a future price: MVRV compares price with what holders actually paid for their coins, and the Mayer Multiple compares it with its own 200-day trend. Both can be high or low, and neither claims to know what comes next.
Sources & method
Every figure on this page comes from one public price series and arithmetic anyone can repeat. Where a claim would need a source we could not verify, it is not on this page.
- Coin Metrics Community Network Data — BTC reference rate and hash rate, daily — the price and hash-rate series every figure on this page is computed from
- Moonkelp’s own analysis — the calculation itself — method described above, reproducible from the series
- Bitcoin Rainbow Chart, blockchaincenter.net — page source, 16 September and 1 October 2022 · archived — the two snapshots that bracket the added tenth band; the nine band coefficients are identical in both
- Bitcoin Rainbow Chart, blockchaincenter.net — page source before and after the V2 refit · archived — last snapshot carrying the 2014 formula (21 Nov 2022, 06:46 UTC); the 30 November snapshot carries the new bands, and the 9 December one carries the operator’s announcement of the change
- Bitcoin Rainbow Chart, blockchaincenter.net — current version and its own version history · archived — the operator’s account of the 2014 origin, the September 2022 extra band, the November 2022 refit and today’s self-refitting version, plus the disclaimer quoted above
The other charts
Perspectives, not investment advice. This page criticises a method, not the people who publish it — and it says so where a construction does something real. How Moonkelp works
This study is reviewed quarterly; corrections normally ship within days. Corrections:contact@moonkelp.com