An all-time low, shortened to ATL, is the lowest price an asset has ever traded at since it began trading. It is the mirror of the all-time high, and it receives far less attention, which tells you something about how markets talk about themselves.
From 2010, Bitcoin's own record low sits around $0.05. As a reminder of how little the metric means alone, that figure is hard to beat, since it describes a market with almost no participants.
How it is measured
The same measurement problems apply as with all-time highs.
- Venue matters. A brief crash on one thin exchange can print lower than anywhere else traded. Bitcoin touched $8,200 on Binance.US in October 2021 while trading near $65,760 elsewhere.
- Wick or close. Some sources record the lowest price touched, others the lowest close. Flash crashes put a large gap between the two.
- Currency matters. An asset can sit at an all-time low against Bitcoin while well above its record low in dollars.
- Aggregated feeds smooth it. Volume-weighted averages across exchanges usually sit above the single lowest print anywhere.
Why the metric misleads
As an argument that something is cheap, the ATL gets used constantly. It is a weak one.
Age distorts it. Launching during a bear market can leave an asset with an ATL from its first week, set on almost no volume. Launching at a cycle top can produce an ATL reflecting genuine sustained selling. Same statistic, entirely different situations.
"Near the all-time low" is not a floor. Prices below any previous low happen constantly, and no mechanism makes an old low act as support. Most tokens that reach a new all-time low go on to reach another.
Survivorship bias hides the failures. Cited as evidence of recovery are, by definition, the assets that recovered. Thousands of tokens hit an all-time low and stayed there permanently. Those never appear in the examples.
Recovery arithmetic is brutal. To return from a 95% drawdown requires a 1,900% gain. Sitting close to an all-time low means the return trip is longer than the fall, not shorter.
Where a new ATL actually comes from
Two very different causes, worth separating.
| Cause | What it indicates |
|---|---|
| Market-wide decline | Correlated selling. Says little about the individual asset |
| Token unlock or team selling | Supply increase, frequently scheduled and knowable in advance |
| Project failure or abandonment | The asset is repricing toward nothing |
| Thin-market print | A handful of trades on almost no [liquidity](/learn/liquidity) |
| Delisting | Access shrinking, which reduces the buyer base structurally |
During a broad market decline, a new low is a different event from one set while everything else is rising. The percentage looks identical.
The one thing it is useful for
Context on drawdown. Knowing where an asset sits between its record high and its record low describes its position in its own history, which is reasonable to know before reading anything else about it.
Description, not signal.
What an ATL does not tell you
- Nothing about whether it will recover. Most tokens setting new lows continue setting them.
- Nothing about value. Price is what the last trade cleared at, and on an illiquid asset that may be a very small trade.
- Nothing about why. The number is identical whether the cause is a market-wide selloff or a project quietly dying.
- Nothing about tradability. An asset at its ATL may have almost no depth on either side, which makes both entry and exit expensive.
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Frequently asked questions
Can an asset go below its all-time low?
Yes, and it happens routinely. An all-time low records the past, and nothing in market structure makes it act as a floor.
Why do different sites show different all-time lows?
They measure differently. Some use aggregated volume-weighted prices across exchanges, others the single lowest print anywhere. Some count intraday wicks, others only closing prices.
Does being near an all-time low mean an asset is cheap?
Relative to its own history, the price is low. Whether the asset is worth more or less than it currently trades at is a separate question entirely.
What is the difference between an ATL and a cycle low?
An ATL is the lowest price ever recorded. Within one market cycle, the bottom is a cycle low, which can sit well above the all-time low.
What was Bitcoin's all-time low?
Around $0.05, from 2010, when almost nobody was trading it. Why an ATL from an asset's earliest days carries so little information is illustrated perfectly by that number.
Why do most tokens never recover from their all-time low?
Usually the low reflects something structural: supply unlocking, a project ceasing development, or liquidity leaving. Recovery requires new demand, and most tokens never attract it.
Is a new all-time low always bad news?
Always it means the price is at its lowest recorded point. Whether that reflects a market-wide decline or the specific asset failing requires looking at the cause rather than the number.
