BEAT THE COUCH · THE OTHER COUCHES · BITCOIN
THE WHOLE RIDE: AUG 18, 2011 TO DEC 31, 2025 · LOG SCALE
On August 18, 2011 one bitcoin cost $10.90. A couch that put $10,000 in and never sold would have had $80.3 million at the end of 2025, 8,027 times its money. It would also have watched it fall 85% from a peak along the way. In the game you get four secret months of that history, and the couch holds.
THE COUCH'S $10,000, EVERY DAY OF THE SERIES. EACH LINE IS TEN TIMES THE ONE BELOW.
Bitcoin is the only couch in the building that people argue about at dinner. It is also the purest test of the game's idea. The volatility is so violent that getting out at the top feels obvious afterwards, and the long-run line goes up so far that every exit you ever made looks stupid from the end of the chart.
The couch does not care about any of it. It bought in 2011, when the whole market for bitcoin was a few websites, and it is still holding. Its worst stretch: down 85%, bottoming on January 14, 2015. Its worst four-month window in the pool: -64.6% (from Aug 19, 2011). Its best: +1841.2% (from Dec 5, 2012).
Four secret months of real six-hour Bitstamp candles: 504 of them, the same number of ticks as the S&P game's two years, at the same pace. Bitcoin trades around the clock, so the sub-daily data is real, not invented. The pool runs from August 2011 to the end of 2025. The couch buys on the first tick and never sells. One button: BUY or SELL. If you never touch it you match the couch exactly and the stamp says HODL. Beat it and 1,000 monkeys replay your round with the same number of trades on random days; beat 90% of them and the win is stamped SKILL. Otherwise LUCK.
| Era | From | To |
|---|---|---|
| The experiment | Aug 2011 | Apr 2013 |
| The first mania and the Mt. Gox winter | Apr 2013 | Jan 2015 |
| The quiet rebuild | Jan 2015 | Jan 2017 |
| The 2017 mania | Jan 2017 | Jan 2018 |
| The crypto winter | Jan 2018 | Mar 2020 |
| The COVID casino | Mar 2020 | Nov 2021 |
| The FTX winter | Nov 2021 | Jan 2023 |
| The ETF era | Jan 2023 | Dec 2025 |
Days the game will tell you about if your window contains them: the first China ban crash (Dec 5, 2013); the top of the 2017 mania (Dec 15, 2017); crypto's COVID Black Thursday (Mar 12, 2020); the 2021 all-time-high week (Nov 9, 2021); the FTX collapse (Nov 9, 2022).
Players beat the bitcoin couch 42% of the time, and 10% of all games passed the monkey audit. The median player finished +0.0% against it. Four months is short enough that a crash can sit right inside your window, which is why timing does better here than against the S&P. It is also why most of those wins are stamped LUCK.
From the private bitcoin ledger, kept apart from the public S&P count by design. Percentages only. Across the whole public ledger the S&P couch wins 62% of 120,800 games.
Play the bitcoin couchfree. Sign in once with Google, then the bitcoin couch is on the floor with the others.Or play the original S&P couch, no sign-in.
A couch that bought $10,000 of bitcoin on August 18, 2011 at about $10.90 and held to the end of 2025 would have had $80.3 million, about 8,027 times the money, after a worst fall of 85% along the way.
In the game, players beat a bitcoin couch that never sells 42% of the time over four-month windows, and only 10% of games passed a 1,000-monkey skill audit.
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Not financial advice. The couch is not licensed for anything.