$BTC | Yes. Bitcoin's Pi Cycle Bottom Indicator fired for the fourth time since 2014 on 1 September 2026, when the price closed at A$108,493 and the 150-day moving average crossed back above the 471-day moving average times 0.745. SatoshiMacro's tracker still has the ratio at 1.066 as of 18 October 2026, sitting inside the "Bottom signal forming" band. It is not a buy signal. It is a late confirmation that typically shows up months after the actual low.
## Why does a crossing moving average count as a bottom signal?
The mechanics are simple even if the reasoning behind the exact numbers is not. Take a 150-day simple moving average of Bitcoin's price and a 471-day simple moving average multiplied by 0.745. When the shorter line crosses back up through the longer, scaled line, the model calls a cycle bottom. Philip Swift built this as the mirror image of his more famous Pi Cycle Top (111-day MA versus 350-day MA times two). SatoshiMacro runs both off daily BTC/AUD closes going back to January 2013, blending Bitstamp's USD series converted at the daily AUD/USD rate with Kraken's native AUD market for the most recent two years.
On the desk, we always treated these curve-fitted ratios as descriptive, not predictive. The 150 and 471-day windows and the 0.745 multiplier were chosen because they fit past bottoms well, not because they were derived from first principles. There is a cute mnemonic floating around that 150 times pi is roughly 471, which is a fun coincidence rather than a real explanation. SatoshiMacro's own page is upfront about that, and so am I.
## What happened the previous three times it fired?
History here is short. But it is consistent in one respect. It is always late.
- 21 July 2015, BTC at A$375. The actual low landed around 14 January 2015 near A$210.
- 22 May 2019, BTC at A$11,017. The actual low landed around 15 December 2018 near A$4,401.
- 24 March 2023, BTC at A$41,145. The actual low landed around 21 November 2022 near A$23,595.
Each firing arrived four to six months after the real bottom, not before it. There was no firing at all during the March 2020 COVID crash, which is the kind of gap that should temper anyone's confidence in a four-data-point model.
## So does the September firing mean the bottom is already behind us?
My read is that this is confirmation of a pattern already in progress, not a new signal to act on. SatoshiMacro's page is explicit that the September 2026 firing has no 12-month forward record yet, so we genuinely do not know how this one resolves. Past 12-month returns after a firing have been positive but mixed, including a period in 2020 where price fell back below the firing level before the next leg up. If you are waiting for this indicator to tell you the all-clear has sounded, you will be waiting for a confirmation that, by design, only ever arrives after the fact.
## What's the catch with trusting this?
A few honest limitations worth sitting with before anyone leans on this. The sample is small. Four firings in twelve years is not enough to build real statistical confidence. The parameters are heuristic, reverse-engineered to fit history rather than grounded in market structure, so they can stop working the moment that structure changes. And the lag is structural, not incidental, since both moving averages are trailing by definition. SatoshiMacro treats it as one input among several cycle-bottom signals, not a standalone call, and weights it inside Tier 1 of the SatoshiMacro Model at 25 percent of that tier's composite rather than letting it drive the whole read on its own.
## How does this change what I would actually do with it?
What I would actually do is use the firing as a prompt to check the rest of the cycle-bottom picture rather than as a trigger on its own. If you are an Australian investor sizing entries around a cycle low for CGT purposes, the practical layer still matters more than the single best price: the ATO's 12-month discount clock only starts running from the date you actually acquire the asset, so front-loading entries during a confirmed bottom window, rather than chasing the exact low tick, is what sets the next disposal up to clear that discount threshold cleanly. That is a tax-timing argument, not investment advice, and it is estimate-level thinking, not a substitute for your own accountant.
Four firings is not much to build a thesis on. Yet each one has, so far, landed inside a period most traders would now call a genuine cycle low in hindsight. That is exactly why it still earns a place in a wider model, not a seat at the head of the table.
https://satoshimacro.com/tools/crypto/cycle-indicators/bitcoin-pi-cycle-bottom-indicator/?utm_source=binance_square&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=autopilot_article