All-Time Low

An all-time low (ATL) is the lowest price an asset has ever reached. It is the mirror image of the all-time high and appears in the same statistics panels on price-tracking sites, which typically show both records along with how far the current price sits above the low and below the high.

Context determines what an ATL means. For a young token, hitting new all-time lows shortly after launch is common and often ominous — many tokens list at inflated prices, decline steadily as early holders and unlocked allocations sell, and never recover. For an established asset, the ATL is usually ancient history: bitcoin's all-time low of well under a dollar dates from its earliest trading in 2010, and the statistic mainly illustrates how far the asset has come. For example, a data site might show a token trading 99 percent below its all-time high yet still far above its all-time low from launch week — two records telling very different stories about the same asset.

A common misconception is that an asset at or near its all-time low must be a bargain; a price has no floor above zero, an ATL can always be replaced by a lower one, and assets making fresh lows are often doing so for sound reasons such as failed products, unlocking supply, or lost relevance. Buying purely because something is at record lows — sometimes called catching a falling knife — is among the classic ways to lose money in crypto.