ATL

Definition

All-Time Low (ATL) is the lowest price an asset has recorded in its entire history. When someone asks what ATL means or what an asset's ATL is, they are referring precisely to that all-time low: the floor below which it has never traded. It is the exact opposite of the ATH (All-Time High) and, together with it, defines the full range an asset has traded in over its lifetime.

Bitcoin's ATL. Bitcoin's absolute all-time low was just a few cents in 2010, in its first months with a market price. But from a current investor's standpoint that figure is anecdotal: the relevant ATL usually refers to the low of the latest cycle, the floor that marks the end of each bear market. The most recent significant one was around $15,600 in November 2022, after the collapse of FTX. Each of those floors has stayed well above the floor of the previous cycle, which defines Bitcoin's long-term pattern of higher lows.

ATL versus ATH. The ATH is the all-time high (the peak an asset has never surpassed) and the ATL is the all-time low (the floor below which it has never fallen). Bitcoin's standing all-time high sits around $126,000, set in October 2025; its relevant cycle ATL, the $15,600 of 2022. The distance between the current price and each of those extremes is what analysts use to measure how far it has risen from the bottom or how much it has corrected from the top (the drawdown).

What the ATL means for Bitcoin treasuries. For a corporate treasury, the ATL is a resilience benchmark: the further its Bitcoin trades from the cycle low, the more cushion the balance sheet has against another bear market. The treasuries that held their BTC through the drawdown to the 2022 ATL — instead of panic-selling — were the ones that captured the full subsequent recovery. That is why how a treasury behaves near an ATL, whether it buys or holds, is one of the most revealing signals of the strength of its strategy.

In Context