What Are the Odds of Profit Holding Bitcoin? Rolling Windows Explained
2026-10-08
"Is it a good time to buy?" is hard. "If I had bought on a random day and held, how often did that work?" is answerable. The Holding Odds tool takes every possible start day, holds for 1 month, 3 months, 1 year, 3 years or 5 years, and summarises the outcomes.
Bitcoin since 2015
| Hold | Win rate | Median | 10th pct | Worst | Doubled | Halved |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 month | 57.6% | +3.1% | -17.7% | -60.3% | 0.5% | 0.1% |
| 3 months | 60% | +9.1% | -26.7% | -62.1% | 7.5% | 1% |
| 1 year | 73% | +76.8% | -42.9% | -83.3% | 42.6% | 7.1% |
| 3 years | 99.8% | +308% | +73.7% | -9.9% | 84.6% | 0% |
| 5 years | 99.6% | +990% | +82.5% | -13.0% | 88.3% | 0% |
Short holds were close to a coin flip with a heavy left tail. Over a year, 73% of start days profited but 7% lost half. Three- and five-year holds almost never lost money, and the worst was still down about 10 to 13%.
The caveats that matter
Neighbouring start days overlap, so a five-year win rate of 99.6% is not 2,474 independent trials. It reflects mostly a handful of distinct market cycles, all of them in an asset that grew from a tiny base. This is survivorship in disguise: Bitcoin is the asset that survived to be studied. Run the same tool on weaker assets and the long-hold numbers fall apart. Treat these as a description of one history, not a promise.
The tool never rounds a near-certain win rate up to 100%. A rate such as 99.6% is shown as 99.6%, because the exceptions are the point.
API: /api/lab/odds?asset=bitcoin&from=2015-01-01.
Pricing and limits
Runs are metered. Hindsight tools cost $0.002 a run, Token Lab holder tools $0.01, and Social Pulse or the AI analyst $0.05, taken from account credits. Paid plans include a monthly allowance and then fall back to credits. Anonymous visitors get a few free hindsight samples a day, and any result someone has already computed is free to view for a few minutes. Daily and monthly spend caps apply to every account.
Numbers come from the BitBank Hindsight Lab run on daily closes (Yahoo Finance) on 8 October 2026. They shift as the series updates and are history, not a forecast.