The compounded annual return, its month-by-month texture, and the two months that did the most work in each direction.
This page lists Bitcoin's annual returns by year — every year of its history on Coinfuty as a single compounded annual return, next to its month-by-month texture and the two months that did the most work in each direction. It is the coarsest grain of the returns grid, built from the same daily closes as the daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly views.
A year's total compounds its twelve monthly returns — each month being its last daily close against the previous month's last close, in USD on UTC boundaries — so the figure is exactly what a buy-and-hold position through the year would have returned. The current year rides as a year-to-date row until it closes.
Bitcoin's yearly results are extreme in both directions — triple-digit gains and deep drawdowns sit a row apart — which is why the readout above the grid quotes the median completed year rather than a simple average.
Every completed year's compounded return is listed on this page, and the readout above the grid shows the median across all of them. Because Bitcoin's yearly results are extreme in both directions, the median year is a more honest summary than a simple average, and it updates as each new year closes.
By compounding the year's twelve monthly returns, each computed from UTC daily closes in USD. Compounding matches what a position held through the whole year would actually have earned.
The grid answers this live — scan the RETURN column for the highest figure. Early years dominate in percentage terms because Bitcoin compounded from a small base; the month-by-month strip next to each total shows how evenly or unevenly the year was won.
Each row here is one calendar year's own compounded return. An annualized return compresses a multi-year stretch into a single per-year growth rate (a geometric mean), so it sits far below Bitcoin's best years and far above its worst. This page shows the raw year-by-year figures, so either calculation can be checked against them.
Because returns compound. A +10% month followed by a −10% month leaves −1%, not 0%. The yearly totals multiply the monthly factors together, which is what a held position would have earned.