AHR999 Index

AHR999 is a single dimensionless ratio that lives almost entirely between 0.45 and 1.2, so the chart plots it on a log-compressed right rail spanning 0.1 to 5 — enough room for the modern DCA-to-overbought range without letting the early blow-off spikes flatten everything else. The sage band below 0.45 is the DCA zone; the rust band above 1.2 is overbought; spot price runs muted on a log left axis purely for orientation. The 2013, 2017 and April 2021 peaks sit above the rail’s ceiling and appear as top-edge overflow ticks rather than being drawn in place.

The reading on this page is sourced from CoinGlass’ published AHR999 series (provenance here), so the two factors below describe the construction CoinGlass implements rather than a fit btc oak runs itself.

AHR999 = (Price / GeoMean200) × (Price / LogFit(t))

The 200-day geometric mean factor measures how stretched price is from its medium-term baseline. A geometric (rather than arithmetic) mean is used because Bitcoin moves multiplicatively — the geometric mean of $30k, $60k, $30k is about $38k, a more honest “typical price” for that window than the arithmetic $40k.

The long-run power-law factor measures how stretched price is from a multi-year secular line, price ≈ a × t^b, where t is days since the genesis block (2009-01-03). The power-law line grows sublinearly as data accumulates, so a price that “feels” the same relative to trend in 2024 as in 2014 produces a similar contribution from this factor.

Multiplying the two captures both timeframes at once. The geometric-mean ratio swings widely with price; the power-law ratio swings less. Their product only goes deeply sub-1 when price is depressed on both horizons (cycle lows) and only well above 1 when price is elevated on both (cycle peaks). Everything between 0.45 and 1.2 is the index’s ordinary habitat. Ah Hui’s 2018 essay framed the result as a DCA dial: lean in below 0.45, hold a steady schedule from 0.45 to 1.2, pause above 1.2 — explicitly a regime tag for position sizing, not a trade signal in either direction.

Reading the canonical cycle anchors against today’s series surfaces the asymmetry that defines AHR999. The four post-2014 cycle troughs cluster inside a ±0.04 band around 0.27 — Jan 2015 at 0.285, Dec 2018 at 0.282, the Mar 2020 Covid low at 0.244 (the lowest of those four), and the Nov 2022 post-FTX low at 0.273. The peaks do the opposite: 45.98, 83.60, 25.82, 9.25, 3.80, then just 1.95.

The clearest view of the regime shift is the maximum AHR999 reading inside each cycle’s topping window, pulled straight from the live series. Six cycles, in order:

All six recorded peaks cleared the 1.2 overbought line — the indicator has not decoupled from late-cycle euphoria. But the absolute levels have collapsed: the highest print on the entire history (83.60 in November 2013) is more than 40× the most recent peak (1.95 in March 2024). Both factors are pushing in the same direction.

The geometric-mean factor shrinks because cycle returns shrink. The 2013 cycle ran >100× in months, producing geometric-mean factors near 8× on their own. The 2017 cycle ran ~100×, 2021 ran ~6×, and 2024 ran roughly 3× from the prior bottom — so the medium-term stretch rarely clears 2× even at peak euphoria now.

The power-law factor shrinks because the denominator fills in. Each extra year of price pulls the secular trendline further from early-2013 levels. By 2024 the fit had accumulated 13+ years against a denominator that was effectively empty in 2013, so the secular-stretch factor compresses naturally.

The bottom holds because the two factors compress symmetrically at lows. When price drops to roughly 30% of the 200-day baseline and 30% of the long-run trend, the product lands near 0.27 — almost exactly where all four canonical troughs printed. The index is structurally favourable to a stable bottom signal in a way the top-side reading is not. (Lost coins do not enter directly; AHR999 is purely price-based, so Patoshi-era supply matters only insofar as it shaped the early log-fit, which had settled by ~2014.)

The 1.2 ceiling is a 2013–2018 artefact, and following it cost the modern cycles. The April 2021 top printed 9.25 and the November 2021 top only 3.80, both crossing 1.2 early in the run. Ah Hui’s “pause DCA above 1.2” rule would have halted accumulation in January–February 2021, with Bitcoin near $35k, and kept you sidelined through the April top near $64k and again through the November top near $69k. The line that worked as a sell flag in 2013 became a premature stop in 2021 — a real, dated false signal, not a hypothetical one.

The power-law factor drifts as data accumulates. AHR999’s long-run factor depends on a log-fit of price against days since genesis, and that fit shifts every year. Modern readings are not directly comparable to 2014 readings in absolute terms — a 1.5 in 2014 and a 1.5 in 2024 are not the same distance above trend. The 0.45/1.2 anchors stay cited, but the time spent at each extreme has narrowed as volatility compressed; the bottom doorway has held empirically, the top doorway has not.

It is price-only, so it is blind to anything behavioural. AHR999 cannot see realized cap, holder cohorts, miner revenue, ETF flows, or derivative positioning. The September 2021 china-mining-ban drawdown, the May 2022 Terra/Luna collapse, and the November 2022 FTX failure all registered only through their effect on price — AHR999 had no early read on any of them. Pair it with a cohort metric like MVRV or a flow metric for the dimension price alone misses.

The upper rail clips by design. The chart’s log-compressed right axis spans 0.1 to 5, so the historical 25–84 spikes intentionally clip at the top edge rather than flattening the useful modern range. Read those overflow ticks as “above the plotted ceiling,” then compare the absolute number against the regime bands above.

If you accumulate on a schedule — the indicator’s explicit design audience — the only line that earns a behaviour change is 0.45. Sub-0.45 has fired at every cycle bottom on record without compression, with the four troughs (0.285 / 0.282 / 0.244 / 0.273) inside a remarkably tight band, so it is a defensible accumulation accelerator. The original “pause above 1.2” instruction, on the other hand, is the part to ignore; a more cautious modern reading flags the real overbought regime closer to 2× than 1.2×, because the absolute distribution has shifted down.

If you are timing the cycle, AHR999 reads like a faster cousin of the 200-week moving average and the Power Law: all three are price-only anchors, so they will tend to agree and will share the same blind spots. To get an orthogonal read on cycle phase, cross it against cohort metrics (MVRV, SOPR) or the supply side (Puell), and trust the 0.45 floor far more than the 1.2 ceiling.