Learn · Plain-English definitions
What does “distance from ATH” actually mean?
It is how far below its record price a coin currently trades, written as a percentage. A coin showing −90% has lost nine tenths of its peak value. Simple to compute, easy to underestimate.
The definition, without decoration
Take a coin's all-time high — the highest price it has ever printed — and its price right now. Distance from ATH is the gap between the two, as a share of the peak:
distance from ATH = (all-time high − current price) ÷ all-time high × 100
A coin that peaked at $100 and trades at $30 sits 70% below its all-time high. Nothing about the formula is exotic. What the number does to a portfolio narrative is where it gets interesting.
Why the percentage understates the damage
Percentages down and percentages up are not the same size. A 50% drop needs a 100% gain to undo. A 90% drop needs 900%. The deeper the hole, the more lopsided the climb out — which is why the useful companion number is the break-even multiple: how many times the current price must multiply just to see the old high again.
| Distance from ATH | Gain needed to recover |
|---|---|
| −50% | +100% (a 2× move) |
| −80% | +400% (a 5× move) |
| −90% | +900% (a 10× move) |
| −99% | +9,900% (a 100× move) |
The fine print that changes the number
All-time highs are recorded by data providers, and providers disagree — a wick on one exchange during a thin market can set an ATH another source never saw. AltClock reads the figures from public market APIs and shows what they report; treat single-digit differences between sites as bookkeeping, not signal.
The other quiet detail: an all-time high is a price somebody paid once, at the top, in a market that may have been much thinner than today's. “Getting back to ATH” is a narrative about one historical trade, not a law of gravity.
How AltClock shows it
Every coin on the board carries its distance from ATH next to the live price, and the Graveyard view sorts the whole market by it — deepest hole first, each with the multiple required to climb out. It reframes “it's down a bit” into a number, which is the entire point.
See it live
All of this runs as numbers on the AltClock board — live, for 40+ coins, with minimal sympathy. Related reading: the break-even multiple and Bitcoin dominance.