Pi Cycle Top Indicator
No predictive value
When Bitcoin’s 111-day moving average crosses above twice its 350-day moving average, the indicator is said to mark the top of the cycle within days.
- Bitcoin, monthly high
- Pi Cycle signal, 12 Apr 2021
- Actual cycle top, 8 Nov 2021
Our own calculation on Coin Metrics Community Data (BTC reference rate, daily). Monthly highs, not closes: on closing prices April 2021 sits above November 2021, which would hide the very gap this chart is about. The signal is the 111-day average crossing above twice the 350-day average.
How it is built
Two simple moving averages, one multiplied by two, and the date on which they cross. The name comes from 350 divided by 111 being close to π — an observation about the chosen numbers, not a reason for choosing them.
Our verdict
No predictive value as a top-dating tool. As a rough signal that price has run far ahead of its own trend, it is a clumsy version of something the Mayer Multiple does more honestly.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-04-12 | The 111-day average crossing above twice the 350-day average marks the top of the cycle within days. | The signal fired at $59,906. The cycle top came 210 days later, on 8 November 2021, at $67,542. It marked an interim high. | Moonkelp’s own analysis |
| 2021-04-12 | The crossing is a clear, robust event. | It cleared its threshold by 0.04 per cent — the ratio peaked at 1.00041. Changing the short window from 111 to 112 days removes the signal entirely; so does 350 → 345, or a multiplier of 2.02 instead of 2.00. | Moonkelp’s own analysis |
| 2024-04 → 2026-05 | The indicator calls cycle tops. | The current cycle produced the highest Bitcoin price ever recorded — $124,824 on 6 October 2025 — and the indicator never fired. Its ratio peaked at 0.74, 0.65 and 0.50 in 2024, 2025 and 2026, against a trigger of 1.0. | Moonkelp’s own analysis |
| 2013-12-05 | Four signals, four tops. | Of the four crossings in the entire price history, the December 2013 one arrived the day AFTER that cycle’s top. Only the December 2017 signal landed on a top. | Moonkelp’s own analysis |
Why the method does not hold
01
The parameters were selected because they fit the tops that had already happened. With two window lengths and a multiplier free to vary, a combination that lands near a handful of historical dates is not hard to find — and finding it says nothing about the next one.
02
The evidence base is a few events. An indicator that has “worked” three times has three data points, and each new cycle is a genuine out-of-sample test rather than a confirmation.
03
Nothing connects the arithmetic to a market mechanism. There is no account of why traders, flows or supply should care about the ratio of two particular averages.
The strongest case for it
Momentum extremes are real: when a short average runs far above a long one, price has moved a long way very fast, and such conditions have historically been fragile. Read as a crude overextension gauge rather than a dating device, the indicator points at something true. The specific numbers, and the claim to mark the top, are the part that does not survive.
What to look at instead
The Mayer Multiple measures the same overextension without claiming to name a date, and MVRV adds what holders actually paid.
Questions
Does the Pi Cycle Top indicator still work?
It did not fire at all in the cycle that produced Bitcoin’s highest price to date. Recomputed on daily data, its ratio peaked at 0.74, 0.65 and 0.50 in 2024, 2025 and 2026 against a trigger level of 1.0, while the market topped at $124,824 in October 2025.
Why 111 and 350 days?
Because those windows fit tops that had already happened. The often-quoted justification is that 350 divided by 111 is close to π, but that ratio does not appear anywhere in the trigger condition, and better π approximations exist among the alternatives. The sensitivity is the giveaway: 112 and 350 produces no 2021 signal at all.
Has it ever been right?
Once cleanly, in December 2017, when the crossing landed on the top itself. Of the four signals in the whole price history, one arrived a day after the 2013 top, one 210 days before the 2021 top, and the current cycle produced none. That is a thin record on which to date a market.
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
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