By Bibhu Pattnaik

Bitcoin is sitting near $60,000, down roughly 50% from its all-time high. The headlines are familiar: institutional money is rotating out, sentiment is broken, and a growing number of voices are questioning whether this cycle is different from the ones before it.

It is not. Here is what the data actually shows.

Six crashes, six recoveries

In 2011, Bitcoin fell 94% from $32 to near zero after the Mt. Gox hack. The obituaries were written. It recovered to hit $1,163.

From 2013 to 2015, it dropped 87%, from $1,163 all the way down to $152. This was the longest crash in Bitcoin's history, taking 48 months to fully recover. China banned financial institutions from handling it. The asset survived.

In 2018, the ICO bubble burst and Bitcoin fell 84% from $19,783 to $3,122. Every retail investor who bought near the top was underwater for years. The market recovered anyway.

Related: If Musk had bought Bitcoin and gold instead of Twitter, here's what it would be worth today

March 2020 was brutal and brief. Bitcoin lost 50% in two days during COVID panic, falling below $4,000. By December it had passed its 2017 all-time high.

May 2021 saw $1 trillion wiped from crypto in a single week. Bitcoin had touched $64,000 in April. Elon Musk reversed on Tesla payments. China cracked down again. It felt like the end. It was not.

Then 2022, the worst in recent memory. Bitcoin peaked at $69,000, then collapsed to $17,500 as Terra Luna imploded and FTX went under. By March 2024, spot Bitcoin ETF approvals drove a surge past $69,000. Twenty-four months from bottom to new all-time high.

The pattern that repeats

Every crash has followed the same rough structure: a parabolic rally, a blow-off top, a sharp initial drop, a relief rally giving false hope, a grind to the true bottom, a long consolidation, then recovery. The timing varies. The structure does not.

The current drawdown fits the pattern. ETF outflows have damaged confidence. Macro pressure from rising Treasury yields and geopolitical tension has pushed sellers into control.

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The Fear and Greed Index sits deep in extreme fear, the same zone where five of the six previous bottoms formed.

Each crash left Bitcoin's infrastructure stronger. Better exchanges after 2014. Institutional custody after 2018. Regulatory frameworks after 2022.

The market that emerges from this one will likely be more robust than the one that entered it.

The people who made the most from Bitcoin were never the ones who timed it perfectly. They were the ones who understood what they were holding well enough not to sell when everyone else did. Six crashes proved that.

Related: If you invested $1,000 in Bitcoin when Satoshi created it, here's what you'd have today

This story was originally published by TheStreet.