Bitcoin's Drawdowns Are Way Bigger Than the IHSG's. Here's How Long Each One Took to Recover
5 min read
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5 min read
Bitcoin has fallen more than 75% from a record high twice in the last decade, and both times it eventually climbed back to a new all time high. If you're holding crypto right now, the real question isn't whether a crypto drawdown this size can happen again. It's how long a recovery like that actually takes, and how that compares to a stock market crash on the IHSG, Indonesia's main index.
A drawdown is how far an asset falls from its highest point to its lowest point after that, shown as a percentage. Recovery means the price climbs all the way back to that old high, not just up off the bottom. NetWort's own look at the IHSG's drawdown history uses the same two definitions, which is what makes putting Bitcoin and the IHSG side by side a fair comparison instead of two different kinds of measurement.
Bitcoin has crashed more than 75% from a record high twice since 2017, and both times a full recovery is now a matter of public record.
2017 to 2020. Bitcoin hit a record $19,783 on 17 December 2017 (CoinDesk), then fell as low as about $3,200 by 15 December 2018, a decline of roughly 84% (CoinDesk). It didn't close back above that old high until 16 December 2020, when it broke $20,000 for the first time (TechCrunch). That's exactly 24 months from the bottom to a new record, and 36 months, three full years, from the original peak.
2021 to 2024. Bitcoin set a record near $69,000 on 10 November 2021 (Forbes). The FTX exchange collapse then dragged it down to about $15,500 by 21 November 2022 (CNBC), a decline of about 78%. Bitcoin didn't pass its old $69,000 record again until 5 March 2024 (CoinDesk), about 15.5 months after the bottom, and 28 months after the original peak.
The IHSG has had two major, fully recovered drawdowns of its own on record, covered in full in NetWort's dedicated breakdown of IHSG recovery time. The short version: the 2008 global financial crisis took the index down about 61%, from 2,830.26 to 1,111.39, and it took about 17 months from that low to climb back above the old peak. The 2020 COVID crash took it down about 38%, from 6,329.31 to 3,937.63, and recovering to that specific pre-pandemic level took about 9.5 months, though reclaiming the index's actual all time high from 2018 took closer to 20 months.
| Decline | Months, bottom to recovery | |
|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin, 2017 to 2020 | About 84% | 24 |
| Bitcoin, 2021 to 2024 | About 78% | 15.5 |
| IHSG, 2008 | About 61% | 17 |
| IHSG, 2020 (to pre-pandemic level) | About 38% | 9.5 |
Line these four episodes up and a pattern most people wouldn't guess shows up. Bitcoin's crashes were far deeper, roughly 20 to 40 percentage points deeper than the IHSG's, yet its recovery clock, measured in months, wasn't dramatically slower. In its faster case, Bitcoin actually clawed back from a much bigger hole in fewer months than the IHSG needed for a shallower one. That doesn't mean crypto is "safer" than stocks. It means the extra risk in crypto shows up mostly as how far it can fall, not as some fixed rule that a bigger fall must always take proportionally longer to undo.
A bigger percentage loss doesn't need a matching percentage gain to break even, it needs more, because the losses and the gains that undo them aren't measured against the same starting number. An 84% drawdown, Bitcoin's worst on record, needs the remaining balance to grow by about 525% just to get back to even. A 61% drawdown, the IHSG's worst on record, needs about 156%. This asymmetry, and exactly why it works this way, is covered with worked examples in NetWort's explainer on the math of loss recovery. It's a big part of why Bitcoin's two crashes, even with a comparable recovery timeline in months, represent a much steeper climb than either IHSG episode.
Bitcoin set its most recent record, $126,198, on 6 October 2025, then fell to about $64,510 by 6 August 2026, a decline of roughly 49%. It has since climbed back to around $78,750 as of 26 August 2026, which is still about 38% below that October 2025 high. This drawdown hasn't recovered yet, so there's no finish-line date to report, only where things stand today. For how this crash's speed compares with the IHSG's own current, still-recovering drawdown, NetWort's look at Bitcoin's real volatility multiple against the IHSG covers that side of the comparison in detail.
None of these four episodes tells you what the next Bitcoin drawdown will look like, how deep it will go, or how long a recovery will take. What they do show, with real dates attached, is that a crypto position can lose 75% or more of its value and still be sitting on a fully recovered price a year or two later. That's a very different risk shape from a diversified stock portfolio, not necessarily a worse one, but one that calls for sizing a crypto position around how much of a fall you can actually sit through, not just how much upside you're hoping for.
NetWort's Portfolio Health card tracks your own portfolio's current drawdown from its own peak in real time, right on your dashboard, so you don't have to guess how deep your own hole is before deciding whether to adjust anything. You can also check Bitcoin's current price and recent history directly on its Asset Detail page before sizing any position around it.