# Bitcoin Pi Cycle Top: The Chart Everyone Watches in 2026
On December 17, 2017, Bitcoin printed a cycle high near $19,700. Roughly one day earlier, a chart nobody outside Bitcoin Twitter was watching flashed a warning: the 111-day moving average had crossed above twice the 350-day moving average, a compression pattern Philip Swift had published only months before. Four years later, on April 12, 2021, the same crossover fired again as Bitcoin hit its interim high near $63,000. According to Bitcoin Magazine Pro, the indicator has flagged the timing of major cycle highs within three days across the 2013, 2017, and 2021 tops.
In mid-2026 those two moving averages are nowhere near touching. That gap is the story worth watching, because a Pi Cycle firing this cycle would mean something specific about how far Bitcoin has run and how tight the moving averages have compressed.
The Pi Cycle Top Indicator is a mechanical rule for spotting Bitcoin cycle peaks. Philip Swift, founder of the analytics site Look Into Bitcoin (now Bitcoin Magazine Pro), published the model in April 2019. Its premise is small: watch two moving averages of Bitcoin's daily price and flag the moment the shorter one crosses above twice the longer one. When that happens, historically, Bitcoin's price has been within a few days of a cycle top.
The indicator doesn't predict tops in the forward sense. It flags a specific compression in how price has moved over the prior year, and that compression has coincided with tops. Traders treat it as a signal to check other data, tighten risk, and consider taking profit, rather than as a standalone sell order.
Two lines carry the whole system. The 111-day moving average tracks Bitcoin's price over the last 111 sessions. Its slower counterpart, the 350-day moving average, tracks the last 350 sessions and is then doubled. That ratio, 350 divided by 111, works out to about 3.153, close to the mathematical constant Pi (3.142), which is where the name comes from. Swift picked 111 because it was the closest whole number to a Pi-based divisor.
When Bitcoin runs hard for months, the 111 DMA pulls up quickly while the 350 DMA lags. If price rises fast enough for long enough, the faster line catches and crosses the doubled slower line from below. That crossover is the trigger. The moment it prints, Pi Cycle fires.
The math doesn't care about narrative, supply flow, or macro conditions. It's a rule that a market moving up steeply for long enough will produce a specific relationship between its own moving averages. This rule has worked when Bitcoin's cycles have been driven by retail-led buying euphoria that runs price hot fast. The open question is whether it holds in a market where ETF flows and institutional accumulation smooth out the run-up.
Three tops make up Pi Cycle's track record, and each one landed within days of the actual peak.
In December 2013, Bitcoin's first major cycle top came in near $1,150 after a run from under $200 earlier that year. The 111 DMA crossed the 350 DMA x2 at roughly the same moment. In December 2017, Bitcoin peaked near $19,700 on the 17th and the crossover fired the day before, according to charts published by CoinCodex and CoinGlass. The drawdown that followed took Bitcoin down roughly 84% over the next year.
The 2021 call was the interesting one. Its crossover printed on April 12, 2021, two days before Bitcoin hit a first cycle high of about $63,000. From there Bitcoin sold off around 53% into July, then rallied to a new all-time high near $69,000 in November 2021. Pi Cycle didn't fire again for that November print, which is the first meaningful gap in its record. Traders who exited on the April signal captured the top of the first leg; anyone who waited for a second Pi Cycle fire in November never got one.
The current cycle has already produced one Pi Cycle event, and it's the one shaping how traders read the indicator in 2026. In March 2024, as Bitcoin pushed through $73,000 for the first time, the 111 DMA crossed above the 350 DMA x2. By the indicator's plain rule, that was a cycle top signal.
Bitcoin then corrected roughly 20% into the summer of 2024 before rallying to fresh all-time highs later that year and into 2025. That behavior broke the historical pattern, where the indicator had preceded drawdowns of 50% or more. Analysts writing on Bitcoin Magazine have argued the ETF era has flattened the steep blow-off phases that Pi Cycle depends on, letting price grind higher without triggering the sharp moving-average compression seen in prior cycles.
Two readings of that event exist among people who track the model closely. First reading: Pi Cycle called an interim top, similar to the April 2021 crossover, and the model is still useful even if drawdowns are shallower. Second reading: institutional flows have permanently changed Bitcoin's shape, and rules built on 2013-to-2021 price behavior are running on outdated assumptions. Both readings can hold at once, and neither implies the indicator should be discarded on its own.
As of July 2026, the 111 DMA and the 350 DMA x2 are running with a wide gap between them, which means no crossover is imminent. Charts on Blockchain.com and Bitcoin Magazine Pro both show the two lines diverged rather than converging. For a crossover to fire from here, Bitcoin would need a parabolic run intense enough to drag the 111 DMA quickly upward while the doubled 350 DMA stays anchored.
That's why traders watching cycle tops don't lean on Pi Cycle alone. Companion indicators fill the gap. The MVRV Z-Score measures how far market value has stretched above realized value and has historically flagged tops within two weeks. Puell Multiple compares daily miner revenue to its 365-day moving average and prints elevated readings when miner profitability runs hot. Weekly RSI and perpetual funding rates round out the toolkit, showing when momentum and derivatives positioning have gone one-sided. When several of those metrics converge in the same window, the signal is stronger than any one on its own.
In this cycle, none of those companion metrics are printing peak-cycle values yet. Analysis from PrimeXBT in 2026 put MVRV Z-Score near 0.49, well below the readings above 7 that preceded the 2017 and 2021 tops. That gap suggests the market hasn't reached the froth those cycles required before rolling over.
If you're watching Pi Cycle because you want an exit trigger for size, the position needs to be somewhere you control before the trigger fires. Cycle tops come with volatility spikes, exchange withdrawal queues, and the kind of order-book stress that turns a "sell into the top" plan into a "why can't I withdraw" problem. In April 2021, several venues paused or delayed withdrawals for specific assets during peak volatility, and the pattern has repeated in every major move since.
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Pi Cycle is a mechanical rule that has landed within days of three major Bitcoin cycle tops and misfired once in the current cycle. Its value in 2026 sits less in being a standalone exit signal and more in being one data point in a stack that includes MVRV Z-Score, Puell Multiple, weekly RSI, and funding rates. When several of those signals align, the market is closer to a top than any one of them would suggest on its own.
In mid-2026 the crossover isn't close and the companion metrics aren't printing peak values either. That doesn't mean a top isn't coming; it means the market hasn't produced the signals that historically preceded one. When those signals do line up, the difference between a clean exit and a stranded position tends to be whether the coins were on the venue or in the holder's own hardware before the tape moved.
If you're building an exit plan around Bitcoin's cycle top and your position is on an exchange or a hot wallet, the withdrawal risk starts mattering long before the top prints. Ryder One keeps your keys offline in an EAL6+ secure element, verifies every transaction on-device, and replaces the paper backup problem with TapSafe Recovery. $229, 60 seconds to set up, and no waiting on a withdrawal queue when the market moves.
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