How often does Bitcoin crash? Every big fall since 2017

By the Crypto Alerts & Alarms team · Published 28 October 2026 · Figures from Coinbase’s public market data, checked against Binance’s; news quotes checked 28 October 2026

From 1 January 2017 to 27 October 2026, Bitcoin closed 10% or more below the previous day’s close on 36 days, about 1.0% of all days, and 5% or more below it on 212 days. Its biggest one-day fall was 38.8%, on 12 March 2020. It fell 20% or more from its highest close so far 13 times, and 4 of those falls reached 50% or more.

Past figures, not a forecast. Every count on this page comes from Coinbase’s BTC-USD daily candles, by UTC day, except the Binance figures named as such. They describe what happened, not what happens next.

What counts as a crash on this page

There is no official definition, so this page counts two kinds of fall, both measured on daily closing prices:

• A one-day fall: a day that closed at least 5%, 10% or 15% below the previous day’s close.
• A fall from a high: a drop of at least 20%, 30% or 50% below Bitcoin’s highest close so far in this data, which starts on 31 December 2016. It lasts until a daily close is back at or above that high.

Because both use closes, they leave out moves that came and went within a day. The section on daily closes below shows how much that can hide.

How often Bitcoin fell 5%, 10% and 15% in a day

Over 3,587 days, Bitcoin closed at least 5% below the previous close on 212 of them, at least 10% below on 36 and at least 15% below on 4. Big days ran the other way too: it closed 5% or more above the previous close on 237 days, and 10% or more above on 49.

The falls came in clusters rather than at an even pace. 2018 alone had 11 days of 10% or more, while some years had none. The most recent 10% day was 5 February 2026, a fall of 14.0%.

The biggest one-day falls since 2017

12 March 2020 stands apart from every other day in the table. A report a week later described a fall of “nearly 40%” (ITPro, 19 March 2020).

The size of a day depends on the exchange and the pair. On Binance’s BTC/USDT, whose daily data starts in August 2017, the three biggest falls measure 39.5% (12 March 2020), 19.5% (16 January 2018) and 19.2% (14 September 2017). In 2017 and 2018, Binance’s daily close sometimes sat several percent away from Coinbase’s dollar price, which is enough to reorder the list.

Falls of 20%, 30% and 50% from a high

Since 1 January 2017, Bitcoin fell 20% or more below its highest close so far 13 times. Of those falls, 6 reached 30% and 4 reached 50%. Each fall starts at a closing high and ends on the first close back at or above it, so a deep drop inside a longer fall is counted as part of that fall. March 2020 is the clearest case: Bitcoin was still below its December 2017 high, so that drop sits inside the fall that began in 2017. The first row is the reverse case: when it starts, Bitcoin was still below its 2013 record, which it first passed on 23 February 2017 (CoinDesk, 23 February 2017), so that row’s high is only the highest close in this data.

Of the falls that ended, the quickest took 8 days from the high to a close at or above it again, and the longest took 1,080 days, from 16 December 2017 to 30 November 2020.

The fall that began at the close of 6 October 2025 reached 53.1% at its lowest close, on 30 June 2026, and the high had not been regained by 27 October 2026. CoinDesk reported that at its lowest, on 30 June, Bitcoin “was down more than 53% from its peak” (CoinDesk, 6 October 2026). Past figures, not a forecast.

What daily closes hide

A daily close can hide much of a wild day. On 10 October 2025, Bitcoin closed 7.2% below the day before, only the 87th-biggest one-day fall since 2017. Yet within that day Coinbase’s price traded as low as 12.1% below the previous close, and on some exchanges it went lower still. The 10 October 2025 flash crash, measured on five exchanges shows those minutes pair by pair.

An alert checks each live price it receives, not only the close, so it can ring on a day whose close looks calm.

What this means for a drop alert

A 10% one-day fall came on about 1.0% of days, and the busy years had far more of them than the quiet ones. Whatever size you choose, two things decide when an alert rings:

• Where the percentage is measured from. In Crypto Alerts & Alarms, a percentage alert measures from the price when you set it, with no time window. A 10% drop alert rings once the price is 10% below that point, whether the fall takes an hour or a month. A price alert rings at the exact level you pick instead.
• Which exchange it follows. Each alert follows one pair on one exchange, such as BTC/USD on Coinbase or BTC/USDT on Binance. In a fast fall, the lows on different exchanges can be several percent apart.

Alerts are checked on our servers, so they fire with the app closed: as a push notification, which can ring as a full-screen alarm through silent mode on Android and go to Telegram too. An alert tells you the price moved; it places no orders and never connects to an exchange account. To pick a size coin by coin, see how big a percentage alert should be, and for a normal day, how much Bitcoin moves in a day.

How we counted

Daily candles for Coinbase’s BTC-USD pair from its public market data, by UTC day, from 31 December 2016 (for the first change) to 27 October 2026: 3,587 daily changes. We used Coinbase because its data covers all of 2017. A one-day fall is the day’s close divided by the previous close, minus one. A fall from a high is the lowest close divided by the highest close before it in this data, minus one; it ends on the first close at or above that high, and the days column counts from the high to that close.

As a check, the same counts on Binance’s BTC/USDT from 18 August 2017 give 184, 30 and 5 days of 5%, 10% and 15% falls, against 191, 30 and 4 on Coinbase over the same days, and 10 falls of 20% or more from a high, against 10 on Coinbase. The date at the top shows when the figures were last calculated.

Common questions

Last updated: 28 October 2026. Spot a mistake? Email support@appsfromzero.com and we will correct it.