Bitcoin monthly returns heatmap (AUD)
Every month of Bitcoin's price history from 2013 onwards, expressed as percentage returns in AUD, colour-coded by magnitude. Australian-resident traders rarely see BTC returns in AUD: most heatmaps online are USD-only and miss the FX effect that matters for AU portfolios. Refreshed daily.
Heatmap
Every month of Bitcoin's history from 2013 onwards, expressed as percentage returns in AUD. Green is positive, red is negative, intensity scales with magnitude. Last column shows the compounded annual return. Hover any cell for the exact open + close prices and return for that month.
Top 5 best months for Bitcoin in AUD
The five highest single-month returns in AUD-priced Bitcoin history from January 2014 to December 2025. All five fall inside the 2017 ICO-era mania cycle or the May 2019 rally that opened the 2020-2021 bull market - confirmation that Bitcoin's largest gains cluster around cycle inflection points rather than late-cycle euphoria.
| Rank | Month | Return (AUD) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | May 2017 | +70.4% |
| 2 | August 2017 | +67.4% |
| 3 | May 2019 | +65.7% |
| 4 | November 2017 | +57.3% |
| 5 | October 2017 | +51.6% |
Top 5 worst months for Bitcoin in AUD
The five largest single-month losses in AUD-priced Bitcoin history from 2014 to 2025. Two of the five came in the 2018 post-mania bear market (November and March 2018). The others are the May 2021 China mining-ban sell-off, June 2022 during the Luna/Terra and Three Arrows Capital cascade, and February 2014 as Mt. Gox collapsed.
| Rank | Month | Return (AUD) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | November 2018 | -38.9% |
| 2 | May 2021 | -34.8% |
| 3 | June 2022 | -34.4% |
| 4 | February 2014 | -32.5% |
| 5 | March 2018 | -31.9% |
Calendar-month seasonality: average Bitcoin return per month (AUD)
The table below shows the average return Bitcoin has produced in each calendar month across the 2014 to 2025 sample, ranked from strongest to weakest. The "Positive rate" column shows the percentage of years that month closed green. 9 of the twelve calendar months have positive average returns; September, March and August sit at the bottom, with June and January close to zero.
| Rank | Month | Avg return | Median return | Positive rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | October | +16.8% | +15.8% | 75% |
| 2 | May | +13.0% | +9.2% | 67% |
| 3 | February | +9.2% | +11.0% | 75% |
| 4 | April | +8.6% | +6.3% | 58% |
| 5 | July | +7.5% | +11.1% | 67% |
| 6 | November | +7.1% | +6.4% | 58% |
| 7 | December | +6.9% | -0.5% | 50% |
| 8 | June | +0.9% | +0.4% | 50% |
| 9 | January | +0.8% | -0.2% | 50% |
| 10 | August | -1.0% | -8.3% | 25% |
| 11 | March | -1.1% | -2.3% | 42% |
| 12 | September | -1.9% | -1.3% | 50% |
Is October the best month for Bitcoin? ("Uptober")
Mostly yes. The "Uptober" pattern is supported by the data. October has produced a positive return in 9 of 12 years (75 percent) across the 2014-2025 AUD sample, tied with February for the best hit rate. October's average return is +16.8% and its median is +15.8%, both the highest of any month. Notable October performances:
- October 2017: +51.6% (ICO-era mania entering its peak months)
- October 2020: +30.1% (post-halving institutional adoption rally)
- October 2021: +33.4% (lead-up to the November 2021 cycle top)
- October 2024: +16.6% (pre-US-election rally)
Caveat: the Uptober pattern reflects historical clustering of cycle-related catalysts in Q4 (halving cycles tend to mature into late-year mania), not a calendar effect per se. The pattern is most reliable when Bitcoin is in a confirmed bull phase. The negative Octobers in the sample were October 2014 (-14.6%), October 2018 (-3.0%), October 2025 (-2.9%); the first two fell inside extended bear markets and the last came just after the 2025 high.
Is September the worst month for Bitcoin?
Yes, narrowly, in average-return terms. September has averaged -1.9% across the 2014-2025 AUD sample, the weakest of any calendar month, with 6 of 12 Septembers closing positive. The gap to March (-1.1%) and August (-1.0%) is small, so treat September's reputation as a mild tendency rather than a rule.
Possible reasons cited by analysts: end-of-summer liquidity returning to risk-off positioning, the calendar gap between mid-year corporate earnings and Q4 catalysts, tax-loss harvesting in markets like the US (their tax year ends in October), and the historical tendency for crypto venture funds to mark-to-market quarterly with Q3 ending September 30.
August is the month to watch on consistency: it has the worst positive-month rate of any month (25 percent positive) and the worst median return (-8.3%), even though a few big up months keep its average near zero (-1.0%). August and September together form a soft late-winter patch for AU holders.
How to read the heatmap
Each row is a year. Each column is a calendar month (January on the left, December on the right). The rightmost column is the compounded annual return for that year. The cell colour indicates the direction and magnitude of the return:
- Bright green: strong positive return (above ~25 percent).
- Light green: modest positive return (up to ~25 percent).
- Light red: modest negative return (down to ~25 percent).
- Bright red: strong negative return (worse than ~25 percent).
The colour scale saturates at plus or minus 50 percent. Months with returns above that level (rare but they happen) all show the deepest green or red.
The heatmap is a long-form pattern-recognition tool. Use it to:
- Spot cycle patterns: the dense-green stripes correspond to bull cycles (2017, 2020-2021, 2023-2024) and the dense-red stripes correspond to bear cycles (2014, 2018, 2022).
- Compare monthly seasonality: Q4 (October-December) often shows green clusters in Bitcoin's history.
- Calibrate expectations: the visual makes it easy to see how often Bitcoin actually has down months. About 44 percent of months from 2014 to 2025 were negative.
- Compare cycle severity: 2018's drawdown shows as months of bright red, 2022's as similar magnitude. The visual scale is consistent across cycles.
Why AUD-native matters
Most Bitcoin returns heatmaps online (Bitbo, MarketCycles, NewHedge) are USD-native. For Australian-resident investors this is the wrong reference currency. Bitcoin is priced in USD globally, but your portfolio value is measured in AUD. The AUD/USD exchange rate moves independently of Bitcoin's price, which means the AUD return on Bitcoin equals the USD return plus the AUD's depreciation (or minus its appreciation) over the period.
Concrete example: in calendar year 2022, Bitcoin/USD fell about 64 percent. AUD/USD also fell about 7 percent over the same period (the USD strengthened). So Bitcoin/AUD fell less, -61.7 percent. Australian-resident holders lost less in AUD terms than the headline USD number implies.
The reverse happens in years when AUD strengthens. In 2020, the AUD recovered from its COVID crash lows, gaining about 10 percent against USD. Bitcoin/USD rose about 305 percent that year. Bitcoin/AUD rose +268.2 percent. Australian-resident holders captured less of the upside.
Over longer periods the FX effect compounds: the AUD fell from about US$0.89 at the start of 2014 to about US$0.67 at the end of 2025, which lifted AUD-priced returns by roughly a third over that stretch. The heatmap above bakes this in automatically because each daily BTC/USD close is converted at that day's AUD/USD rate, and the last two years use Kraken's native BTC/AUD market.
What the heatmap shows
Several patterns repeat across Bitcoin's history. None of them are deterministic; they are statistical tendencies subject to small-sample bias.
Cycle alternation. Bull and bear cycles are clearly visible as alternating green and red years. The four-year halving cycle that crypto analysts reference shows as a rough pattern: bull market in the year of the halving and the year after, mean reversion in year three, bear or accumulation in year four. The pattern is loose; the 2024-2025 cycle has been less clean than the 2017 cycle.
Q4 strength. October through December has been Bitcoin's strongest seasonal window. Across 2014 to 2025, October-December months averaged +10.3 percent, versus +4.0 percent in the other nine months. The pattern is consistent enough to be widely noted but weak enough that any single Q4 can break it (Q4 2018, Q4 2022 and Q4 2025 were all negative).
January weakness post-Q4 rally. After strong Q4s, January often shows mean reversion. The pattern is weak but visible in the heatmap.
Bull market acceleration. The biggest single months (the brightest green cells) almost all occur in the second year of a bull cycle, not the first. The pattern is: bull market starts with steady accumulation, then accelerates into vertical price action in year two. The 2017 cycle showed this with November and December 2017 producing +57 percent and +35 percent months. The 2020-2021 cycle showed it with February 2021 producing +33 percent.
Data and methodology
The underlying data is the daily BTC/AUD file built by scripts/fetch-btc-aud-daily.mjs: Bitstamp BTC/USD daily closes from January 2013 converted at the daily AUD/USD rate, with Kraken's native BTC/AUD market for the last two years. scripts/fetch-btc-aud-history.mjs then derives monthly closes (the last daily close of each calendar month) and writes the static JSON file consumed by the browser-side heatmap renderer. Both refresh automatically every day.
If a price source is unreachable (network outage, rate limit, transient error), the previous static data file is kept unchanged. The heatmap continues to render with the last-known-good data. The "data through" line under the heatmap tells you the exact data window.
The monthly return for month N is computed as: (close_N - close_N-1) / close_N-1 * 100. The first month in the series has no return (no prior month to compare against). The compounded annual return shown in the rightmost column is computed by multiplying the monthly growth factors: (1 + r_Jan/100) × (1 + r_Feb/100) × ... × (1 + r_Dec/100) - 1.
The heatmap starts in January 2013, the first month of the daily file, so the first return shown is February 2013. The statistics on this page use the twelve complete years from 2014 to 2025, because 2013's thin early market produced outliers that would swamp the averages (November 2013 returned +473.4%). The stats grid under the heatmap covers every month shown, so its best-month figure includes 2013.
Related tools
- Crypto CGT Calculator - applies the ATO 50 percent discount to a specific Bitcoin disposal. Use to compute after-tax returns on any month's gain.
- Tax-Loss Harvesting Calculator - estimate tax savings from realising losses before 30 June 2026 to offset gains.
- SMSF Crypto CGT Calculator - the SMSF equivalent of the standard CGT calculator with one-third discount and fund-tax rates.
- Best Crypto Exchanges Australia 2026 - AUSTRAC-registered exchanges where Australian investors can buy and hold the Bitcoin shown on this heatmap.
Frequently asked questions
Across the 144 months from 2014 to 2025, October has been the strongest calendar month with a +16.8% average return and a positive close in 9 of 12 years. May follows at +13.0%, then February at +9.2% and April at +8.6%. The single best month in that window is May 2017 (+70.4% in AUD), during the 2017 ICO-era rally. October is the most consistent seasonal signal; November and December have been weaker than their reputation, at +7.1% and +6.9% on average.
September is the weakest calendar month by average return in the 2014-2025 AUD data, at -1.9% with 50 percent of years closing positive. March is next at -1.1%. August has the worst hit rate of any month (3 of 12 years positive) and the worst median (-8.3%). The single worst month in the window is November 2018 (-38.9% in AUD), in the 2018 bear market. The late-winter weakness (for Australians) is real in the averages but small, and any single year can buck it.
Mostly yes. In AUD-priced Bitcoin data from 2014 to 2025, October has produced a positive return in 9 of 12 years (75 percent, tied for the best hit rate with February). October's average return is +16.8% and its median +15.8%, both the highest of any month. Examples: October 2017 (+51.6%), October 2020 (+30.1%) and October 2024 (+16.6%). The misses were October 2014 (-14.6%), October 2018 (-3.0%), October 2025 (-2.9%). Past performance does not guarantee future results, but the historical edge is meaningful.
The first three cycle peaks in the data came in November or December: November 2013, December 2017 and November 2021. The current cycle has broken that pattern so far: its highest daily close is A$187,780 on 13 August 2025, and BTC has since fallen as much as 54.9 percent from it. Seasonality is a weak guide to cycle timing, and three prior cycles is a small sample.
A Bitcoin monthly returns heatmap is a grid visualisation showing Bitcoin's price-change percentage for every month over a multi-year period, with cells colour-coded by magnitude (green for positive returns, red for negative). It is the standard way long-term Bitcoin investors evaluate seasonality, cycle patterns, and the asset's overall volatility profile. The SatoshiMacro heatmap differs from most online heatmaps because it expresses returns in AUD rather than USD, which is the right reference currency for Australian-resident investors.
Across the 144 months from 2014 to 2025, 80 months (55.6 percent) closed positive. The average monthly return is +5.55 percent. The positive bias is the mathematical foundation of Bitcoin's long-run uptrend, but it masks the magnitude asymmetry: the biggest positive months have been larger than the biggest negative months (best +70.4% vs worst -38.9%), which compounds Bitcoin's CAGR upward even though the win rate is only modestly above 50 percent.
Bitcoin is priced in USD on most global exchanges, but Australian-resident holders measure portfolio value in AUD. The AUD-USD exchange rate moves independently of Bitcoin's price, so the AUD return on Bitcoin equals the USD return plus the AUD weakening (or minus the AUD strengthening). In years where AUD has weakened against USD, AUD-native Bitcoin returns are higher than USD returns. In years where AUD has strengthened, AUD returns lag USD returns. From the start of 2014 to the end of 2025 the AUD fell from about US$0.89 to US$0.67, which lifted AUD-priced returns by roughly a third over the full period.
The monthly file is rebuilt from the daily BTC/AUD file, which refreshes automatically every day: Bitstamp BTC/USD converted at the daily AUD/USD rate, with Kraken's native BTC/AUD market for the last two years. Each month's close is the last daily close of that month, and the current month updates daily until it ends. If a price source is unreachable, the previous data file is kept so the heatmap continues to render with the last good data. The 'data through' line directly under the heatmap tells you the exact data window.
The heatmap itself shows raw price returns, not CGT-adjusted returns, because CGT applies at the disposal level rather than the monthly mark-to-market level. For after-tax returns on a specific disposal, use the Crypto CGT Calculator on SatoshiMacro which applies the ATO 50 percent CGT discount when the holding period qualifies. For EOFY tax-loss harvesting strategy, use the dedicated calculator that nets losses against gains and applies discount ordering correctly.
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