The best charts to read are the simplest. Bitcoin’s chart right now could be on the first page of a book called Technical analysis 101:

The bitcoin chart is looking bearish

Credit: ADVFN

It is faintly bearish. It is bearish because the sideways trend is dropping down a little, which suggests beyond the high volatility the tendency is for the price of bitcoin to fall. It’s not a big tendency, but down is not up.

You can also see the range of this trend is wide and that simply indicates uncertainty. The bigger the range, the greater the factor of the price being heavily influenced by indecision or noise or uncertainty or rise, or however you want to think of volatility. Before this move the price was much more settled but now there is a polarization between the bull and the bears and the result is large swings of consensus.

So what now?

Interestingly, statistically it takes on average five attempts for a breakout and we are now on move five. Anyone who has a basis in stats will tell you that means nothing to us in this instance, but you don’t have to be a killjoy to take note. Also a breakout in this case can go both ways.

For swing traders this is a gift but frankly I’ve never been comfortable selling tops and buying dips in these kind of trends because the bend in the end can rip the shirt off your back.

To me there are three things to watch out for:

1. A break about this line for a potential big move upwards. This is also a signal for perhaps another move up in gold if this is a warning of something nasty on its way geopolitically.
2. A breakdown through the bottom channel which will announce at the least the crypto winter is here.
3. A drop in volatility signaling the end of this trend is near. A drop in volatility to pre-trend levels of range will indicate the market is happy with the price and the subsequent general tendency will be heavily suggestive that the new direction is the way ahead. Any fast break from then on will likely go a long way in that direction. Once again ultimately it will signal $100,000 or crypto winter. This is no 50/50 because when it starts moving you will have plenty of time to jump on board since it won’t be the sort of move you wake up in the morning to and find it’s all in the past now.

To me it’s a lot about next month’s election. Crypto calculus is simple: Trump up, Harris down. We know the U.S. government hates crypto, that the democrats dislike it and that Trump likes it or at least has issued his own NFTs.

However, what might really spike crypto far beyond the U.S. election is Russia/Ukraine and the Middle East. Both these situations have a big audience for flight capital and any meltdown will see big money head for bitcoin on the way to the airport. If bitcoin price spikes its “heads up.”