Bitcoin (BTC) could rise 10% in early January as the historic New Year pattern repeats itself

Historically, Bitcoin turns positive in early January, giving the crypto asset a 2/3 chance of gaining 10% next week.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) struggles in 2025 were real. Despite a near-epic bull run, the October crash exposed the rally’s fragility. Even as current market sentiment remains bearish, new data suggests that BTC rarely remains negative after New Year’s, even after weak year-end transitions like the one in 2022.

Alpharactal founder and CEO Joao Wedson said Bitcoin has a historically strong tendency to turn positive in early January.

Bitcoin’s New Year Effect

In the last post about X, Wedson argued that the market structure around the New Year’s transition supports a bullish short-term outlook despite recent weakness.

In Bitcoin’s price history, the week after December 31 has only seen negative performance three times, implying a 2/3 chance that BTC ends the first week of January with a gain of at least 10%.

This pattern held even after weak transitions at the end of the year. For example, in 2022, Bitcoin initially fell before recovering sharply in the following days. Wedson noted that while year-end transitions are generally weak, with notable exceptions during the 2017-2018 and 2020-2021 periods, the days immediately following the new year often determine whether BTC retreats or continues higher.

He also extended his analysis to longer-term cycle behavior, pointing out that from one halving to the next, Bitcoin consistently records around 109-110 weeks where the transition from Sunday to Monday starts on a positive note. At the same time, he found that the number of weeks that start with a decline has steadily increased across cycles. The analyst estimated around 100 such weeks in the current cycle, which he said makes short-term BTC trading increasingly difficult.

Wedson also described 2025 as the worst year on record for positive weekly starts, as only 21 weeks started higher, compared to 31 weeks that started lower. This means the accumulation during that period reflected bad timing, the analysis shows. Despite this, he added that Bitcoin’s overall performance in 2025 was relatively resilient as it ended the year with a 10% loss, a result still considered significantly better than the deep declines in 2018 and 2022.

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LTH accumulation holds

On-chain data supports Wedson’s short-term outlook and shows that long-term selling pressure from BTC holders remains low. Crypto analyst Axel Adler Junior said the Long-Term Holder (LTH) Distribution Pressure Index has entered the accumulation zone, showing minimal selling activity. The Z-score of the index is currently -1.628, below the threshold of -1.5 that indicates a low distribution.

Adler explained that this followed a brief surge in selling on December 10 and 11, when long-term holders’ spending rose sharply before easing again within days. Since then, sales activity has remained low. He added that the seven-day average LTH spend has fallen to around 221 BTC, while the SOPR remains above 1 at 1.13, essentially meaning holders are not rushing to sell.