Uptober: is October really Bitcoin's best month?
Bitcoin closed October higher in 10 of the last 13 years. We ran all twelve months through the same test to see how much of Uptober is luck.
Saurav Wagh · 7 min read
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Uptober is the idea that Bitcoin rises in October. By the usual count it holds up: from 2013 to 2025 Bitcoin closed October higher in ten years out of thirteen, with a median gain of 14.6%, the highest of any month.
We ran all twelve months through the same test on Bitstamp's daily candles, which start in August 2011. October comes first on some counts and not on others, and thirteen years is too few to tell a pattern from luck. Below is the arithmetic, and a way to check it on your own chart.
Where Uptober comes from
The word is "up" plus "October". We could not find a first use that anyone can date, but it was all over crypto social media by the early 2020s, after October 2020 and October 2021 closed 28.2% and 40.0% higher. It has cousins too: "Rektember" for September and "Moonvember" for the month after.
In stocks, October's reputation runs the other way. The crashes of 1929 and 1987 both came in October, and on 19 October 1987 the Dow fell 22.6% in one day. A month gets its name from a few loud years. The test is whether the quiet years agree.
What the monthly candles show
We used Bitstamp's public daily candles for BTC/USD, in UTC, because Bitstamp is the oldest exchange still running, and we measured each month from the last close of the month before to its own last close. That gives fifteen finished Octobers, 2011 to 2025: ten closed higher and five closed lower. October 2026 is still open as we write, so it is not counted.
The five red ones were 2011 (down 31.5%), 2012 (down 10.0%), 2014 (down 13.6%), 2018 (down 4.5%) and 2025 (down 4.0%). The two best were 2013, up 61.2%, and 2017, up 48.7%.
Look at where the usual count begins. The grids that get shared every autumn, CoinGlass's among them, start in 2013, which is the best October on record. Start two years earlier and the score drops from ten of thirteen to ten of fifteen. Those first two Octobers came from a tiny market and we would not lean on them, but they show how much a start date can do.
Is October really the best month
That depends on what "best" means. Here are all twelve months over the same thirteen years, 2013 to 2025, counted three ways.
| Month | Closed higher | Median month | Average month |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 7 of 13 | +0.7% | +4.7% |
| February | 10 of 13 | +12.2% | +13.1% |
| March | 6 of 13 | −2.1% | +13.4% |
| April | 8 of 13 | +8.1% | +11.9% |
| May | 7 of 13 | +9.5% | +10.3% |
| June | 7 of 13 | +2.1% | −0.7% |
| July | 9 of 13 | +8.3% | +7.7% |
| August | 4 of 13 | −8.5% | +1.0% |
| September | 5 of 13 | −3.2% | −3.0% |
| October | 10 of 13 | +14.6% | +19.8% |
| November | 8 of 13 | +8.8% | +41.3% |
| December | 5 of 13 | −3.2% | +4.1% |
By how often it closes higher, October ties with February. Nobody has a name for February.
By the median, which is the middle year once you sort them, October leads at 14.6%. By the average, November wins easily, and a single month does it: November 2013 closed 450.0% higher. Take that one month out and November's average falls from 41.3% to 7.3%.
The window matters as much as the measure. BTCUSDT on Binance starts in August 2017, so a chart there shows nine finished Octobers. Over those nine years, on the same Bitstamp prices, October closed higher seven times. So did February and July, and July has the highest median at 15.8%. November, the champion of the longer table, closed higher in four years of nine.
October sits near the top on every cut we tried. It is "the best month" on only some of them.
Thirteen Octobers is a small sample
From 2013 to 2025, 86 of 156 months closed higher, which is 55%. A month picked blind has slightly better than even odds of being green. Ten of thirteen sounds far from that. It is closer than it looks, because nobody picked October in advance: we looked at all twelve months, sorted them, and gave a name to the one that stood out.
Example: take a coin that lands heads 55 times in 100. Flip it 13 times for January, 13 times for February, and so on for all 12 months. The chance that one month you named beforehand shows 10 or more heads is about 9 in 100. The chance that at least one of the 12 months does is about 69 in 100. Luck alone hands you a month with October's record roughly two times in three. The real table has two of them.
Economists met this problem in stocks long ago. In 2001, three of them ran the stock market's calendar rules through 100 years of daily prices. The best-known rules looked strongly significant one at a time. Judged against the whole set they had been picked from, the effect was gone.
A fairer test starts after people noticed the pattern. Since October 2021, the last of the big ones, four Octobers have finished: up 5.5%, up 28.5%, up 10.9% and down 4.0%. Four is not a sample either.
None of this proves October is an ordinary month. Thirteen years cannot prove that. What the numbers do say is that the record fits a market that rises a little more often than it falls, with one month getting lucky.
A green month is not a smooth month
A monthly candle hides the route. Measured from September's last close, this is how far price fell inside four Octobers that finished green.
| October | Lowest point | Date | Month closed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | −32.7% | 2 October | +61.2% |
| 2019 | −12.1% | 23 October | +10.3% |
| 2024 | −7.0% | 10 October | +10.9% |
| 2022 | −6.4% | 13 October | +5.5% |
The 2013 low came as US authorities shut down the Silk Road market. Bitcoin traded at $85 on Bitstamp that day and closed the month at $203.54.
Leverage turns those dips into exits. A 10x long has its liquidation price roughly 9.6% below entry. Open one at the start of October 2019 and it was liquidated on the 23rd, eight days before the month finished green. At 20x the gap is about 4.6%, and the dips of 2022 and 2024 went deeper than that.
October 2025 ran the other way. Bitcoin made a record high of $126,272 on the 6th, 10.7% above September's close, and four days later came the liquidation cascade of 10 October, after which the month closed 4.0% lower.
How to check it on your own chart
- Open a Bitcoin chart and set the interval to 1M. Each candle is one calendar month.
- Find the October candles. A candle that closes above its open is an up month. Crypto trades through the weekend, so each month opens where the last one closed.
- Read the lower wick as well as the body. It shows how far price fell before the close.
- Note the first candle on the chart. It decides how many Octobers you are counting.
- Do the same for the other eleven months before you believe any one of them.
Expect small differences between sources. Exchanges print slightly different prices, and data sites do not all end the day at the same hour. A gap of a few tenths of a percent is normal.
Trade October like any other month
A calendar pattern does not tell you where to get in or where you are wrong. The plan does, and the plan is the same in every month. Fix what you lose if the idea fails and put the stop where the idea is wrong. The position size follows from those two. Leverage comes last: it only sets how much margin the exchange locks and how close liquidation sits.
What does change inside a month is the schedule of news. The US inflation report lands at 8:30 in the morning, New York time, on a day you can look up weeks ahead, and those dates are worth more than the month's name.
We would not size up because it is October. If the pattern is real, a normal position profits from it. If it was luck, the normal position is what keeps a red October small.
Not financial advice.
Questions and answers
What does Uptober mean?
Uptober is "up" plus "October", a nickname for Bitcoin's habit of closing October higher. On Bitstamp's candles it did so in ten of the thirteen years from 2013 to 2025.
Is October always a green month for Bitcoin?
No. Bitcoin closed October lower in 2014, 2018 and 2025. It also did in 2011 and 2012, before most counts begin.
Which month is Bitcoin's best month?
It depends on the measure. From 2013 to 2025 October had the highest median return and tied February for the most green years. November had the highest average, because of one month in 2013.
Was October 2025 a green month?
No. Bitcoin set a record high on 6 October 2025 and still closed the month 4.0% lower on Bitstamp.
Can you trade Bitcoin seasonality?
Thirteen Octobers are too few to size a trade on. Plan the trade the way you would in any other month, with a fixed risk and a stop.
Not financial advice. Read our disclaimer.
