What This Chart Shows
Bitcoin oscillates around its power-law equilibrium like a damped spring: it overshoots high, undershoots low, and each cycle the swing gets smaller. This model fits that behaviour to price’s deviation from trend and maps it to where price sits in the cycle.
- Power-law equilibrium (dashed) is the long-run trend; the harmonic center (purple) adds the cycle swing.
- Decaying ±σ bands compress over time — teal below, warm above — as the cycle amplitude decays.
- The oscillator (lower panel) is where price sits in the envelope: −100 = capitulation bottom, +100 = euphoria top.
- Cycle energy (the fading line) is how much oscillation amplitude remains — Bitcoin’s volatility “battery” draining across cycles.
How to Read It
Watch the oscillator. Down near −100 (capitulation) price is at the bottom of its decaying envelope — historically the highest-win-rate one-year setups. Up near +100 (euphoria) it is at the top, and forward returns have been poor. The forward-return edge for the current zone is shown in the readout above the chart.
Because each cycle’s amplitude decays, the bands narrow and the extremes get less extreme — the model bakes in diminishing returns. It is a slow, structural cycle gauge, not a timing tool, and the fit will drift as new data arrives. Read it alongside on-chain valuation and trend.
Drag to pan, scroll or box-zoom to zoom; the toolbar autoscales, resets or downloads the chart. Hover to read price, the harmonic center and the oscillator together.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a damped harmonic oscillator?
A spring whose swing shrinks a little more each cycle. Applied to Bitcoin, it captures the ~4-year cycle around the power law, with the amplitude decaying over time.
What does the oscillator mean?
Where price sits in the decaying envelope: −100 is the cycle bottom (capitulation), +100 the top (euphoria). Capitulation has led to strong 1-year returns; euphoria to weak ones.
Where does the data come from?
Everything is computed in the browser from our daily price feed — the power-law and oscillator fits, bands and forward-return stats. No third-party data. Updated daily.