# Uptober: is October really bitcoin's best month?

> Is Uptober real? BTC rose in 7 of 9 Octobers since 2017, median +11.00% — but by chance alone some month looks this good 60% of the time.

Research · Janorium · Published 2026-10-20  
Web page: https://janorium.com/articles/uptober-bitcoin-october-seasonality

On Binance spot, bitcoin rose in 7 of 9 Octobers from 2017 to 2025, with a median October of +11.00% against +0.24% for the other months. Nine Octobers are a tiny sample, though: shuffle the same 109 monthly returns at random and at least one of the 12 months looks this good 60% of the time — and ETH shows no October effect at all.

"Uptober" is the crypto meme that October is bitcoin's month. On the data this platform has — Binance spot since
August 2017 — October is indeed at the top of the table: the best average month and the second-best median. What the
data cannot do is tell that apart from luck, and the check on ETH points the other way.

## Data and method

- **Prices:** Binance spot BTCUSDT and ETHUSDT daily candles, 2017-08-17 → 2026-10-19 — every daily candle the platform
  has for these pairs, with no missing days.
- **Monthly return:** the last daily close of a month against the last daily close of the month before. That gives 109
  complete months, September 2017 to September 2026: nine of every calendar month (ten Septembers), and nine Octobers,
  2017–2025.
- **October 2026** is not finished at the time of writing: from the September 30 close to the October 19 close BTC was
  at -2.02% and ETH at -10.35%. It is in none of the statistics.
- **Backtests:** runs cannot start before 2020, so the six Octobers 2020–2025 are also run as buy-and-hold backtests on
  the strategy "Lump sum: buy once, hold" (#35, the one from [DCA or lump sum](https://janorium.com/articles/dca-vs-lump-sum-btc-eth-backtest)):
  9,880 USDT of a 10,000 USDT account buys BTC at the October 1 open and sells at the October 31 close, with a 0.1% fee
  and 0.05% slippage on each side. A run therefore shows slightly less than the price move: fees and 120 USDT left in cash.
- **Luck check:** the statistics of the nine real Octobers against nine months drawn at random from all 109, and against
  a shuffle of the month labels, 100,000 and 20,000 draws.

## Every month, ranked

Up = the number of years the month ended higher. Rank is among the 12 months, by median.

| Month     | BTC up | BTC median | BTC mean | BTC rank | ETH up | ETH median | ETH mean | ETH rank |
| --------- | -----: | ---------: | -------: | -------: | -----: | ---------: | -------: | -------: |
| January   |  5 / 9 |     +0.70% |   +3.91% |        5 |  5 / 9 |     +0.06% |  +15.43% |        8 |
| February  |  6 / 9 |     +0.41% |   +6.91% |        6 |  6 / 9 |     +8.12% |   +4.00% |        2 |
| March     |  6 / 9 |     +5.45% |   +2.77% |        4 |  6 / 9 |     +7.17% |   -3.27% |        5 |
| April     |  6 / 9 |    +11.81% |  +10.25% |        1 |  6 / 9 |     +7.22% |  +17.62% |        4 |
| May       |  4 / 9 |     -3.50% |   +1.38% |        8 |  5 / 9 |     +0.19% |   +9.75% |        7 |
| June      |  3 / 9 |     -5.93% |   -5.26% |       10 |  2 / 9 |     -8.62% |  -11.58% |       11 |
| July      |  7 / 9 |     +8.04% |   +9.69% |        3 |  5 / 9 |    +11.22% |  +16.50% |        1 |
| August    |  3 / 9 |     -6.49% |   -1.48% |       11 |  4 / 9 |     -7.39% |   +1.63% |       10 |
| September | 4 / 10 |     -4.31% |   -2.08% |        9 | 4 / 10 |     -9.06% |   -6.85% |       12 |
| October   |  7 / 9 |    +11.00% |  +18.11% |        2 |  6 / 9 |     +0.74% |   +5.90% |        6 |
| November  |  4 / 9 |     -7.10% |   +5.13% |       12 |  5 / 9 |     +8.00% |   +7.58% |        3 |
| December  |  3 / 9 |     -3.00% |   +6.33% |        7 |  4 / 9 |     -0.66% |   +7.17% |        9 |

For bitcoin, October has the best mean, +18.11%, the second-best median after April, and shares the most up years, 7 of
9, with July. Across all 109 months BTC ended higher in 58, and the median month was +1.96%; the 100 months that are not
October had a median of +0.24% and a mean of +3.36%.

ETH is the opposite picture: October is sixth by median and seventh by mean, and its median of +0.74% is the same as
the +0.72% of ETH's other months. If October were special for crypto as a whole, the second-largest coin would show
some of it.

## Six Octobers as backtests

| October | BTC, price | BTC, backtest  | ETH, price |
| ------- | ---------: | -------------- | ---------: |
| 2017    |    +47.61% | —              |     +0.18% |
| 2018    |     -3.84% | —              |    -14.69% |
| 2019    |    +10.27% | —              |     +0.74% |
| 2020    |    +27.97% | +27.30% (#690) |     +7.40% |
| 2021    |    +39.88% | +39.05% (#691) |    +42.88% |
| 2022    |     +5.50% | +5.13% (#692)  |    +18.36% |
| 2023    |    +28.47% | +27.79% (#693) |     +8.60% |
| 2024    |    +11.00% | +10.55% (#694) |     -3.21% |
| 2025    |     -3.89% | -4.14% (#695)  |     -7.17% |

Five of the six Octobers that a backtest can cover ended higher. Two of them did most of the work:

**Backtest: [Lump sum: buy once, hold](https://janorium.com/backtests/691)**  
BTCUSDT · 1d · Spot · 2021-09-30 → 2021-10-31

| Return | Max drawdown | Sharpe | Win rate | Trades |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| +39.05% | 11.42% | 6.25 | 100.0% | 1 |

*BTC, October 2021: buy October 1, sell October 31 — +39.05%*

**Backtest: [Lump sum: buy once, hold](https://janorium.com/backtests/693)**  
BTCUSDT · 1d · Spot · 2023-09-30 → 2023-10-31

| Return | Max drawdown | Sharpe | Win rate | Trades |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| +27.79% | 4.36% | 6.82 | 100.0% | 1 |

*BTC, October 2023: +27.79%*

**Backtest: [Lump sum: buy once, hold](https://janorium.com/backtests/690)**  
BTCUSDT · 1d · Spot · 2020-09-30 → 2020-10-31

| Return | Max drawdown | Sharpe | Win rate | Trades |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| +27.30% | 2.69% | 8.30 | 100.0% | 1 |

*BTC, October 2020: +27.30%*

The small ones and the one loss — October 2025 also had the deepest dip inside the month, 14.48%:

**Backtest: [Lump sum: buy once, hold](https://janorium.com/backtests/694)**  
BTCUSDT · 1d · Spot · 2024-09-30 → 2024-10-31

| Return | Max drawdown | Sharpe | Win rate | Trades |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| +10.55% | 4.83% | 3.29 | 100.0% | 1 |

*BTC, October 2024: +10.55%*

**Backtest: [Lump sum: buy once, hold](https://janorium.com/backtests/692)**  
BTCUSDT · 1d · Spot · 2022-09-30 → 2022-10-31

| Return | Max drawdown | Sharpe | Win rate | Trades |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| +5.13% | 6.31% | 2.05 | 100.0% | 1 |

*BTC, October 2022: +5.13%*

**Backtest: [Lump sum: buy once, hold](https://janorium.com/backtests/695)**  
BTCUSDT · 1d · Spot · 2025-09-30 → 2025-10-31

| Return | Max drawdown | Sharpe | Win rate | Trades |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| -4.14% | 14.48% | -0.97 | 0.0% | 1 |

*BTC, October 2025: -4.14%*

In two of the best BTC Octobers, ETH bought the same way made far less:

**Backtest: [Lump sum: buy once, hold](https://janorium.com/backtests/696)**  
ETHUSDT · 1d · Spot · 2020-09-30 → 2020-10-31

| Return | Max drawdown | Sharpe | Win rate | Trades |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| +7.00% | 7.54% | 1.90 | 100.0% | 1 |

*ETH, October 2020: +7.00%, against +27.30% on BTC*

**Backtest: [Lump sum: buy once, hold](https://janorium.com/backtests/697)**  
ETHUSDT · 1d · Spot · 2023-09-30 → 2023-10-31

| Return | Max drawdown | Sharpe | Win rate | Trades |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| +8.19% | 11.09% | 2.68 | 100.0% | 1 |

*ETH, October 2023: +8.19%, against +27.79% on BTC*

## How much of it could be luck?

Nine Octobers is nine data points. The question is how often nine months picked at random would look as good.

- **Drawing 9 of the 109 months at random**, the median came out at +11.00% or more in 14.3% of draws, and 7 or more
  of the 9 were up in 11.5%; both at once in 6.3%. The mean of +18.11% is rarer — 2.2% of draws — but it leans on one
  month: October 2017, +47.61%, in the middle of that year's run-up.
- **But October was not chosen in advance — it was picked because it looks best.** Shuffle the month labels over the
  same 109 returns, and in 91.7% of shuffles at least one of the 12 months has a median of +11.00% or more; in 60.0% one
  of them has that median and at least 7 up years too. With twelve months to choose from, one of them looking like
  "Uptober" is what chance produces more often than not.
- **Without 2017,** BTC's October stays near the top: 6 of 8 up, median +10.6%, mean +14.42% — first by mean, second
  by median after April again.

> **What this does not show**
>
> - **A sample of nine.** Two Octobers going the other way would turn 7 of 9 into 5 of 9 — January's count. A pattern
>   that nine years can neither confirm nor rule out is not something to plan around.
> - **October follows the year it sits in.** In the six years bitcoin ended higher (2017 from August, 2019, 2020, 2021,
>   2023, 2024), all six Octobers were up; in the three years it ended lower (2018, 2022, 2025), one of three was. Here
>   "October" and "a bull year" are hard to tell apart.
> - **One exchange, one history.** Binance spot from August 2017; older bitcoin history — longer than this platform's
>   data — may look different, and a seasonal pattern that becomes a well-known meme tends to get traded away.
> - **Not a forecast.** At the time of writing, October 2026 was at -2.02% for BTC with twelve days to go.

## Conclusion

- On Binance spot 2017–2025, October was bitcoin's best month by mean (+18.11%) and second by median (+11.00%), up in 7
  of 9 years; five of the six backtested Octobers 2020–2025 made money.
- That is weak evidence: picking the best of 12 months from nine years of data finds a month this good 60% of the time
  by chance alone.
- ETH, the obvious check, has no October effect — its October median is the same as its other months.

How to read the run cards: [backtest metrics explained](https://janorium.com/guides/backtest-metrics-explained). Another calendar question
on the same data: [the best day of the week to buy bitcoin](https://janorium.com/articles/best-day-to-buy-bitcoin-dca-backtest).