$BTC 's Hidden Edge: Hard to Trade, Powerful to Hold

Most people ask the wrong question.

They ask, “Where is Bitcoin next week?”

The better question is, “At what horizon does signal beat noise?”

Hurst exponent (H) helps answer that:

H = 0.5 → random walk

H > 0.5 → persistence

H < 0.5 → mean reversion

In my latest tests, rolling 120-day Hurst sits mostly above 0.55 (persistence zone), with only a small share of windows in mean-reversion territory.

So the market does shift regimes, but not in a way that gives a stable short-term trading edge.

I also compared raw log returns vs power-law residual construction.

Residual-based construction produced modestly higher full-sample Hurst, which suggests naive return construction can misclassify part of structural trend curvature as noise.

Now the key part:

What the data suggests by holding horizon (approx.)

• <3 months: mostly regime noise; edge is unstable

• 3–12 months: mixed outcomes; path and entry timing matter

• 12–18 months: persistence starts to matter more than daily noise

• 3+ years: strongest evidence of structural trend behavior

Across long history, Bitcoin’s power-law fit remains strong in sample (high R²), which is not a day-trading signal it’s a long-horizon structural signal.

Bottom line:

Short horizon = roulette wheel.

Long horizon = power law r^2~96%

Position size decides whether you benefit from that edge or get forced out before it can work.