Bitcoin Is Experiencing Its Fourth-Worst Q1 on Record

According to data from CoinGlass, Bitcoin is currently recording its fourth-worst first quarter (Q1) performance in history.

The chart shows Bitcoin down –20.96% in Q1 2026, placing the current quarter among the most negative starts to a year since Bitcoin began trading. Only three prior years show a deeper Q1 drawdown: 2018 (–49.70%), 2014 (–37.42%), and 2015 (–24.14%). No other first quarter on the table exceeds the severity of the current decline.

This positioning alone highlights how extreme the opening months of 2026 have been relative to Bitcoin’s long-term quarterly history.

Q1 Has Always Been Bitcoin’s Most Unstable Quarter

The broader historical data reinforces that Q1 outcomes are structurally volatile rather than consistently bullish. While the average Q1 return across all years shown is a strong +46.06%, the median Q1 return is –2.26%, indicating that typical Q1 performance is slightly negative.

This discrepancy exists because a small number of extraordinary upside years—such as 2013 (+539.96%), 2021 (+103.17%), and 2023 (+71.77%)—dramatically skew the average higher. Outside of those outliers, Q1 has frequently delivered sharp drawdowns, even during longer-term bull cycles.

In that context, the –20.96% result in Q1 2026 is severe, but it is not statistically abnormal within Bitcoin’s historical structure.

Weak Q1s Have Occurred Across Multiple Market Regimes

The chart makes clear that poor Q1 performances are not isolated to bear markets alone. Large negative first quarters appear in years that preceded recoveries, years that followed major rallies, and years embedded in broader downtrends.

For example, Q1 losses in 2015 and 2018 occurred after prolonged declines, while other weak starts were followed by stronger performance later in the year. This reinforces that Q1 drawdowns are a recurring feature of Bitcoin’s seasonal behavior rather than a definitive signal of long-term trend failure.

Other Quarters Tell a Very Different Story

Looking beyond Q1, the same dataset shows that Bitcoin’s historical performance improves materially later in the year. Median returns rise to +7.57% in Q2, +0.96% in Q3, and surge to +47.73% in Q4, making the fourth quarter the most consistently positive period in Bitcoin’s history.

This contrast underscores how front-loaded volatility tends to be, with the year’s weakest conditions often concentrated early rather than evenly distributed.

With a –20.96% decline, Q1 2026 ranks as Bitcoin’s fourth-worst first quarter on record. While the magnitude is historically significant, the chart shows that similar or worse Q1 outcomes have occurred multiple times before.

The data frames the current quarter not as an anomaly, but as an extreme example of a well-established pattern: Bitcoin’s first quarter is statistically unstable, frequently painful, and prone to deep drawdowns, even within longer-term growth cycles.

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