Pi-Cycle Top Indicator

It compares two moving averages of Bitcoin's daily closing price: the 111-day moving average (111DMA), and the 350-day moving average multiplied by two (350DMA × 2). The signal fires the day the faster 111DMA crosses up through the slower, doubled 350DMA line:

The two windows are deliberately far apart — roughly a third of a year versus a full year — so a crossover only happens when recent price has accelerated dramatically away from the longer-term trend. That is the whole idea: the indicator is a measure of how far short-term price has extended above its own base.

The name is a quirk of the numbers: 350 ÷ 111 ≈ 3.153, close to π (3.14159). The multiple of 2 and those two specific windows were found to fit past tops well; they are empirical, not derived from any theory about why π should matter to Bitcoin.

Say the 350-day moving average sits at $45,000. Doubling it gives a trigger line at $90,000. As long as the 111-day average stays below $90,000, the indicator is quiet. If a sharp rally drags the faster 111-day average up to $90,000 and it crosses above that line, the signal fires:

The logic is that for the 111-day average to reach twice the 350-day average, spot price has to have run far above both — the kind of parabolic extension that has historically only occurred near the euphoric end of a bull run.

The crossover has a notable track record: it triggered within a few days of Bitcoin's cycle tops in the 2013 run-ups and again in December 2017, and again during 2021's first major local top in April 2021. Because it only depends on price (no on-chain or sentiment data), it's one of the simplest, most replicable signals in this glossary — which is also exactly why it's widely watched and can become partly self-fulfilling once a lot of the market is tracking the same line.

Because it fires at most once per cycle, the Pi-Cycle Top is best used as a confirmation flag, not a daily dashboard: it either has crossed or it hasn't. The more useful daily read is how much room is left — the gap between the 111-day average and the doubled 350-day line tells you how close the market is to the historical extension zone even before any crossover.

Treat a crossover as a reason to review exposure, not an automatic sell. Pair it with a valuation gauge that describes ongoing risk rather than a one-time event — the MVRV Z-Score and the Puell Multiple are natural companions — so a single price-only signal isn't carrying the whole decision.

Price-extension signals of this kind sit in the cycle & price-extension family, one of the four families blended into the Risk Model's 0–10 score. Crucially, the model reads extension as a continuous gradient — how stretched, right now — rather than waiting for a binary crossover that fires only at the very top. That lets it register rising risk on the way up instead of confirming it after the fact. See the Methodology page for how the families are weighted.

Pi-Cycle Top is a top-detection signal, not a bottom or ongoing-risk gauge — it stays silent for most of a cycle and only fires once, historically near a peak. It also isn't perfectly precise: a crossover confirms extension has reached a historical extreme, but the exact days-to-actual-top gap has varied across cycles.

The deeper risk is amplitude decay. Each Bitcoin cycle has topped with a smaller percentage gain than the last, so a future top could be gentle enough that the 111-day average never reaches twice the 350-day line — the signal would simply never fire, giving a false all-clear. A price-only rule calibrated on three or four past cycles is a small sample to bet on.