Falls of three quarters, and the way back
How far a coin has fallen from a high, how long the fall took and how long it then took to get back to that high: a coin's deepest falls are measured exactly like a share's, and they can be far deeper.
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Where it misleads
A few falls are a very small sample, and every figure is a fact about those dates: none of it says whether a coin will fall again or recover. How long the way back took, and whether it came at all, differs for every fall, and an open fall has no recovery date yet. The depth also depends on the calendar: measured on all seven days, a fall can read a little deeper or shallower than on the weekday table.
Compared with
- Maximum drawdown — the single worst fall of a portfolio, which this page measures on a coin
- Time under water — how long a portfolio spends below its previous high, the length of the way back
- Why we measure crypto on weekdays: 365 versus 252 — the calendar these falls are measured on
- When correlation changes regime — how a coin moved with a stock index in different windows
How it is computed here
The fall is the maximum drawdown on the weekday table, as everywhere else on this site: the lowest close after a high, against that high. The way back is the number of days from that low until a close is again at or above the high; a fall that has not got back is marked open. Getting back from a fall of d needs a rise of d ÷ (1 − d): a fall of 50% needs +100%, and one of 75% needs +300%.
Worked example
- ORB-USD's deepest fall on its own weekday closes went from its high on 18 Jan 2022 to its low on 16 Dec 2022: −80.7%.
- 4,559.27 ÷ 23,642.89 − 1 = −80.7%. Getting back to the high needs a rise of 23,642.89 ÷ 4,559.27 − 1 = +418.6%
- It got back to that high on 6 May 2024, 507 days after the low.
- The demo portfolio holds it at 6.1% of its money; the portfolio's own deepest fall was −32.0%.
Demo portfolio: seven invented holdings, generated prices, measured by the real engine. Past returns do not predict future ones.
Where it misleads
A few falls are a very small sample, and every figure is a fact about those dates: none of it says whether a coin will fall again or recover. How long the way back took, and whether it came at all, differs for every fall, and an open fall has no recovery date yet. The depth also depends on the calendar: measured on all seven days, a fall can read a little deeper or shallower than on the weekday table.
Every price on this page is invented. The coin and the index fund are two series generated for this lesson from a fixed seed: they are not any real coin or fund, and none of the figures is market data. The coin is not the Orbit (ORB-USD) that the example portfolio of this site holds: it is a separate invented series, so the figures here are not that portfolio's.
The arithmetic of the way back
A fall of d from a high needs a rise of d ÷ (1 − d) to get back to it. A fall of 50% needs +100%, one of 75% needs +300%, and the two deepest falls below needed +634% and +666%.
- d — the fall as a positive fraction: 0.75 for −75%.
- G — the rise needed to get back to the high.
- Phigh, Plow — the closes at the high and at the low.
The invented coin's falls, as this product measures them
On the weekday table of a portfolio of coins, from the invented closes of the coin between 1 January 2015 and 1 October 2026. A fall starts at a close that is a high and ends at the first close at or above it. Days are calendar days. Every fall of more than half the value at the high is listed: five in these nearly twelve years, the one still open among them. Smaller ones are not.
| Fall | High | Low | Depth | High to low | Low back to the high |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 2 Jan 2015: 738.91 | 28 Aug 2015: 237.59 | −67.8% | 238 days | 362 days, on 24 Aug 2016 |
| 2018 | 9 Jan 2018: 8,140.05 | 22 Nov 2018: 1,108.65 | −86.4% | 317 days | 669 days, on 21 Sep 2020 |
| Mid-2021 | 1 Jun 2021: 21,903.41 | 30 Aug 2021: 8,761.55 | −60.0% | 90 days | 94 days, on 2 Dec 2021 |
| 2022 | 17 Jan 2022: 28,688.72 | 15 Aug 2022: 3,745.44 | −86.9% | 210 days | 752 days, on 5 Sep 2024 |
| 2025–26 | 2 Sep 2025: 47,826.45 | 22 Jun 2026: 16,760.21 | −65.0% | 293 days | not yet: the fall is open |
What the table says:
- The two deepest falls, −86.4% and −86.9%, each lost more than three quarters of the value at the high. Getting back needed +634% and +666%: from the high of 9 January 2018 to 21 September 2020 is 986 days, from the high of 17 January 2022 to 5 September 2024 is 962.
- In the two deepest, the way back took longer than the fall: 669 days against 317, and 752 against 210.
- The latest close, 1 October 2026, is 26,800.00: 44.0% below the high of 2 September 2025. That fall is open.
For scale, over the same years the invented index fund's deepest fall was −36.8%, from 6 February 2020 to 23 March 2020, and it got back to its high on 12 May 2020, 50 days after the low.
Where to see it in your own numbers
The position panel of a coin shows its worst fall over the window shown, and the Stress tests tab replays the episode called Crypto winter 2022 on your portfolio, holding by holding: its dates are fixed, 8 November 2021 to 21 November 2022, and it appears only when you hold a coin directly.
How to read it
- Two falls are a very small sample. Every figure above is a fact about those dates and says nothing about the next fall, its depth or its recovery.
- The length of the way back is not the length of the fall. It depends on the high that has to be reached again, and a fall that is still open has no recovery date yet.
- The calendar changes the dates and the depth a little. Measured on all seven days the 2015 fall reads −68.1%, the 2018 one starts on Saturday 13 January 2018 and reads −86.6%, and the 2022 one ends on Saturday 13 August 2022 and reads −87.2%; the fall of mid-2021 and the open one are identical on both calendars.
Compared with
- Maximum drawdown — the single worst fall of a portfolio, which this page measures on a coin
- Time under water — how long a portfolio spends below its previous high, the length of the way back
- Why we measure crypto on weekdays: 365 versus 252 — the calendar these falls are measured on
- When correlation changes regime — how a coin moved with a stock index in different windows
Questions people ask
Does a fall this deep say that a coin will fall again, or that it will recover?
No. The table lists what happened on those dates. Nothing in it says whether another fall will come, how deep it would be, or whether it would get back.
What does an open fall mean?
A fall is open while the close has not yet got back to its high. It is shown, not left out, because the fall a holding is in today is usually the one that matters.
Why does the 2018 fall read −86.4% here and −86.6% elsewhere?
Because this site measures a coin on weekdays. The highest close before it was on a Saturday, which a weekday table does not have, so its high is Tuesday 9 January 2018, 1.3% lower. Measured on all seven days the fall is −86.6%.
Sources
- Invented series (a coin and an index fund), generated for this lesson from a fixed seed and reproducible in the project's tests; no market data
Last reviewed 3 Oct 2026 by Sphinx Risk.