DN12 | A Liquidity Squeeze
An exhaustive market examination, from macro to technicals, Bitcoin to altcoins, and everything in between.
The Decode Newsletter is back on its regular schedule, and thank you for your patience. The timing hasn’t actually been too bad; Bitcoin has done little over the past several weeks, just ranging between 60k and 76k, and is currently holding just around the centreline of that range.
Because we’ve had a few weeks’ break, I’ve decided to just go over and recap everything from end to end, from the macro to the technicals. I’ve tried to cover as much ground as possible in this double-length issue; it’s a comprehensive refresh and the most detailed newsletter I’ve ever produced.
The ISM came in with a second expansionary signal at the end of February, but we’ve seen significant declines in both gold and the stock market during March. Geopolitical events have taken the spotlight recently with the Iran war. Oil very quickly spiked to double the price per barrel, and is still very elevated due to ongoing tensions.
Together, these converging factors are creating a classic short-term liquidity squeeze. However, while the broader markets appear increasingly turbulent, the underlying technical structures and the overall market setup for crypto remains largely unchanged.
This is a technical newsletter, and whilst I think it is important that we always acknowledge all risks, we will let the charts do the talking. As Bernard Baruch once said, “Show me the charts and I’ll tell you the news.”
So, let’s get into it - there is a lot to discuss!
Contents
Business Cycle
Liquidity
Global Risk
Gold
Copper/Gold
Dollar Index
Oil
Equities
S&P500
Russell 2000
Bitcoin
Bitcoin/Gold
Production Cost
Elliott Wave Analysis
Bitcoin Dominance
Altcoins
Altcoin Dominance
Ethereum
Solana
Bittensor
Sui
Velo
Closing Thoughts
The Decode Newsletter is back on its regular schedule, and thank you for your patience. The timing hasn’t actually been too bad; Bitcoin has done little over the past several weeks, just ranging between 60k and 76k, and is currently holding just around the centreline of that range.
Because we’ve had a few weeks’ break, I’ve decided to just go over and recap everything from end to end, from the macro to the technicals. I’ve tried to cover as much ground as possible in this double-length issue; it’s a comprehensive refresh and the most detailed newsletter I’ve ever produced.
The ISM came in with a second expansionary signal at the end of February, but we’ve seen significant declines in both gold and the stock market during March. Geopolitical events have taken the spotlight recently with the Iran war. Oil very quickly spiked to double the price per barrel, and is still very elevated due to ongoing tensions.
Together, these converging factors are creating a classic short-term liquidity squeeze. However, while the broader markets appear increasingly turbulent, the underlying technical structures and the overall market setup for crypto remains largely unchanged.
This is a technical newsletter, and whilst I think it is important that we always acknowledge all risks, we will let the charts do the talking. As Bernard Baruch once said, “Show me the charts and I’ll tell you the news.”
So, let’s get into it - there is a lot to discuss!
Contents
Business Cycle
Liquidity
Global Risk
Gold
Copper/Gold
Dollar Index
Oil
Equities
S&P500
Russell 2000
Bitcoin
Bitcoin/Gold
Production Cost
Elliott Wave Analysis
Bitcoin Dominance
Altcoins
Altcoin Dominance
Ethereum
Solana
Bittensor
Sui
Velo
Closing Thoughts
Business Cycle
We’ll start off by updating our proprietary Macro Trend Oscillator (MTO), our proxy for the business cycle that looks at Lending, Manufacturing and Industrials, Commodities, and Liquidity. In the chart below I have enabled our three key liquidity metrics as line chart overlays, and I’ve also added a second indicator at the bottom that is just a 50/50 aggregate of the popular ISM and Copper/Gold ratios.
First of all, it’s clear that the business cycle has continued to expand. We have 3 orange bars on the oscillator that are trending higher. Although the March bar is not yet closed, we will see how the March ISM numbers affect the chart when they are released next week. Unless there is a significant surprise in the data, I wouldn’t expect too much change. My own expectation for the ISM specifically is a slight softening, but still above 50 and in expansion.
I’ve included the indicator at the bottom to help illustrate why metrics such as the ISM and the Copper/Gold index, which are commonly used for macro forecasting in Crypto, cannot be used in isolation. Where these metrics are strong is in expansion, and you can see that bottom-to-top they tend to correlate with powerful moves up on Bitcoin. We are currently seeing this aggregate metric trending higher, which is great news, although this is mostly due to the ISM at the moment (more on Copper/Gold later).
On the flipside, when these metrics are trending downwards they are less useful, often still in decline long after Bitcoin has ended its bear market. Case in point, the Copper/Gold ratio has been in decline for more than four years, in which time Bitcoin has had a bear market and a bull market.
Liquidity
On the MTO histogram, the three liquidity overlays provide not just good correlation to Bitcoin’s peaks, but also to Bitcoin’s troughs, so they tend to follow the trend more accurately in both directions. Notable today is that two of these metrics appear to be rolling over in the March bar, although we have yet to see how that looks at close and whether it is sustained over multiple bars.
To get a better sense of where liquidity is going, we also have our Global Liquidity Index, which is published for free on TradingView. I’ve updated this with several iterative improvements over time, and I believe it is currently the most comprehensive tool out there.
The indicator shown here in purple corroborates what we are seeing on the MTO with a slight cooling of liquidity in the short term. The weighting and overall calculation for liquidity is different in each indicator, and actually the Global Liquidity Index provides a raw equal-weighted number, which the MTO does not.
What this raw number reveals is that overall liquidity is still quite tight, with current %RoC lower than at any of Bitcoin’s prior cycle peaks (2013 being the only other notably soft peak). We can see how tight conditions have been, with liquidity chopping around the zero line for most of the recent bull market, and only breaking out into clear expansion for the last 12 months. Ironically, over those same 12 months, Bitcoin’s price performance has faltered and we’ve been in a flat correction ever since. More on that later in our Elliott Wave analysis.
Reflecting on both Business Cycle and Liquidity analysis, I think we need to see the March data come in next week before jumping to any conclusions. Softening of liquidity in the near term may not be good for crypto prices, and we will have to keep a close eye on this over the coming weeks and months; however, there is currently no change to the larger trend at this time, which is still pointed higher.
Escalation of geopolitical tensions and yet another war are likely having some impact on our data, but where most will be fearful of deeper corrections and increased downside risk, I favour an increase in liquidity support. The correlation between the crypto market and liquidity is quite robust, so assuming liquidity gets back on track, I don’t expect Bitcoin to move against it for long. Either Bitcoin starts to play catch-up, or we have a premature business cycle and liquidity peak.
Global Risk
Whilst not strictly on the topic of Global Risk, I thought it would be interesting to include a chart that maps the starting point of all the wars since the Great Depression on a chart of the S&P 500. Conflicts sometimes cause black-swan-type events in the near term, although the worst possible example, World War II, caused a 40% decline that dragged out over 3 years, but actually the stock market finished higher by the time the war was over.
I’m not saying that war doesn’t matter. I think all of the current conflicts are utterly abhorrent and I hate to see humanity taking a path against itself like this, but there is no war that meaningfully changes the course of asset prices over the long term, and that is the point here.
So while geopolitical tensions are rising, we need to stay focused on the long-term outlook and remember that narrative follows price, not the other way around. The only area that I think gives us cause for concern is with the price of Oil, and we will cover that shortly.
Gold
Back on the topic of Global Risk then, let’s take a look at Gold. I called the top on Gold in DN09 on Feb 2, so we can observe how that has played out since. Actually, the top landed on January 29 so my call was bang on, and so far we have seen an ABC zig-zag correction shaving around 20% off the price.
It’s unclear if the current ABC is completed. For a larger degree correction the whole pattern is far too small overall; hence, this is probably still wave A of a larger corrective structure that will take the rest of the year to play out. That could be a flat or a zig-zag (shown here), and price would typically come down to the same area as the previous wave 4. If we also project the 200-week SMA forwards, we could potentially see Gold down in the 3000s by the time the correction completes.
March has certainly shown a significant sell-off in Gold. While traditionally Gold rises during periods of fear, a concurrent sell-off in both equities and Gold signals a liquidity squeeze is underway.
Copper/Gold
The Copper/Gold ratio has been sticky and continued to drive to new lows, with the latest low printed on the January candle. Since then it’s come pretty close to retesting that low, and despite the drop in Gold’s valuation, because Copper has also sold off, we have not yet seen this ratio rise.
The monthly RSI has been oversold for a whole year now. Clearly, fear and systemic hedging have been the dominant forces, but this can’t go on forever. I will speculate that the January low was also a long-term macro low and hopefully I don’t have to backtrack on that.
Interestingly, the Copper/Gold ratio put in its low on January 28, the ISM flipped into expansion with the January numbers released on February 2, and then Bitcoin put in its 60k low just a few days after that on February 6th. Coincidence? Is the bottom in? Let’s keep digging.
If manufacturing expansion continues over the next couple of months, Copper demand will increase, and it is logical given our stance on Gold that we will see this ratio rise. I’ve set an alert at 0.00137, which I think would give us a clear signal that the trend is reversing. 0.00137 is actually the low of the April 2025 candle, where the RSI first hit the floor a full year ago.
Dollar Index (DXY)
We’ve seen a surge in Oil prices, a sell-off in Gold, and a surge in the Dollar over the same period. The DXY has bounced significantly off its January low and whilst I still believe this macro channel will break eventually, it looks like the emerging energy crisis is delaying that move.
DXY up means liquidity is down, and this matches up well with what we are seeing on our custom liquidity indicators. However, I don’t expect this move on the DXY to be sustained for long and I am not expecting it to surpass ~102 before it reverses lower.
Oil
So our last chart in this section is of course the elephant in the room, Oil, and this is the chart that has the potential to change our course. We all know what this chart represents, and nothing good happens if these prices stay high.
Because energy is the baseline cost for producing and transporting almost everything, this will bleed directly into broader inflation data, and with Oil prices currently close to 2022 highs, this won’t be good for liquidity if it continues. Yields are already climbing and eventually central banks will need to respond.
Overall, when I look at Gold, Copper, the Dollar, and Oil, it starts to make much more sense as to why we are not seeing our expansionary ISM prints validated in crypto price action, and why we are seeing liquidity get squeezed in our macro indicators.
However, ever the optimist, I believe that we are past ‘peak shock’ for this particular event and Oil prices should slowly trail back down from here. We don’t really need to read the news; we just need to watch this one chart. If the situation is quickly de-escalated, or escalates in a manner that frees up the supply bottlenecks, Oil prices will drop like a rock, and perhaps the correction on equities could truncate sooner. If that doesn’t happen… well… let’s not speculate.
I think we have to give it a month of wait-and-see. This could just mean a longer period of ranging sideways for Bitcoin, or, if there is another shock on the macro side, potential short-term new lows. We will cover these scenarios in more detail later.
Equities
S&P 500 (SPX)
In the last issue I finished up talking about SPX, suggesting the top was probably in, noting a clear 5-wave impulse starting from the 2022 lows, with a 5th wave rounding off right as it hits its 1.618 extension target, and with significant divergence on the (3-day) RSI.
It wasn’t the only option at that time, but a few weeks on and it certainly looks as though that is now confirmed, especially with the break of the wave 4 low at 6521. Here is the updated chart:
It’s a bit of an ugly picture unfortunately, but first I want to zoom out and give you my current full count for this secular bull market. Typically these last somewhere between 15 and 20 years, and with this one starting in March 2009, we are right at the 17 year mark.
The overall idea is that stocks go into correction here, and then push on for another leg up that will eventually bring us closer to the 18 or 19 year mark before we see something more significant. There are always variations on long term counts, especially on equities as they just keep going up, and over the years we have to keep extending our Elliott Wave counts to account for that fact. There is no guarantee of course that the secular ends in this range, perhaps it can go longer, we just have to keep tracking it.
In this count, while the intermediate 5-wave impulse from the 2022 lows is complete, zooming out to the secular bull market reveals this is likely just the beginning of a larger macro Wave 4. Because wave 2 was sharp, perhaps we can expect this wave 4 to be a more sideways structure, and not necessarily bring us to the -2 standard deviation line as marked.
I will work up some alternate ideas as well and present those over time, but for now let’s get back to the near term price action. The decline has been orderly so far, and we are already quite oversold on the daily. We should be pretty close to completing the first leg of this immediate ABC correction, though it is unclear at this time how that might fit into our larger wave 4.
I also noted last issue that a decline in stocks didn’t have to take Bitcoin down with it, and so far that has held out, although we will have to see how it goes and we will get into the Bitcoin analysis shortly. I suspect this correction will take some months to complete, and we will track it as it develops, but we live in a world now where a tweet can change the course of markets, so whilst this correction looks fairly well entrenched, I remain open to the idea that things can change.
Russell 2000 (RUT)
I haven’t covered the Russell 2000 for a while now, but I just want to update and revisit one chart that we’ve looked at in the past. We’re seeing a tightening of liquidity, as we’ve talked about already, and large-cap stocks are heading into correction. The SPX is heavily weighted towards mega-cap tech and multinational corporations, so a tightening in global liquidity will naturally see the index come off.
What we are looking for with regard to the Russell, and its strong correlation to crypto, is a sustained expansion of the business cycle over the coming months. If it does genuinely re-accelerate as we hope that it will (notwithstanding current red flags), then capital should start to rotate into small caps, which are far more levered to real domestic growth.
The excessive money printing in 2020 gave us a very steep incline that doesn’t make a realistic fractal, but 2016 shows an almost identical pattern. Price breaks out of the trendline, comes back and retests, then accelerates higher before pulling back a fair bit, and that seems to be where we are now. I’ve marked this with small orange triangles.
The blue line is Crypto Total Market cap excluding Bitcoin and Stablecoins, and we can see that in 2016 there was also a sizeable pullback in crypto around the same time. So whilst I acknowledge we haven’t seen the push I was expecting to materialise sooner, this idea is far from dead in the water, and at risk of sounding like a broken record, we do need to see continued expansion and confirmation in other indicators.
Bitcoin
I think that’s enough macro for this issue, so we can move on to Bitcoin now and see where things are headed. Most of the time the Bitcoin chart alone can tell us some of the things that we need to know, and one of the things that I notice straight away is that Bitcoin has done absolutely nothing during all of this turmoil. Oil is up, Gold is down, Stocks are down, Liquidity is down, but Bitcoin hasn’t moved. That kind of relative strength is something that I like to see in what are otherwise currently quite turbulent markets.
Bitcoin/Gold
Last time we looked at Bitcoin/Gold, we had a potential bottom at 14.56. Since then, the ratio has gone a little lower down to 12.2, but then bounced right back up and is currently at 14.79. I’ve made a small adjustment to the count to accommodate that final push lower.
Wave 5 of C is still pretty messy and hard to count the detail on, but it looks quite a lot better with this extra leg down, and although we didn’t quite hit the 1.618 extension, we’re in the right area and the reaction off the low has been quite strong so far. It will be important to see the move up off the low develop into a clear 5-wave impulse, so we’ll keep an eye on that, but I think the bottom is in.
On a long term chart, BTC/GOLD is far below both the 200 and 300 week SMA, which interestingly are currently converging as there has been no significant rise in the ratio for some years, and the RSI is also more oversold than it has ever been in the history of the chart.
This is of course because of the extraordinary strength we have seen in Gold, but I don’t think that Bitcoin is rolling over against Gold in a more permanent way. In some ways this chart is more anecdotal and interesting, than it is important, as we tend to look at Bitcoin in USD terms, but it does give us sense of both capital rotation and macro risk sentiment, given the opposite risk-on and risk-off positioning of these two assets.
In addition, if we see a breakout on BTC/USD we can validate that breakout on the BTC/GOLD chart, as it strips out dollar debasement.
Production Cost
Bitcoin’s production cost is an interesting chart that we’ve looked at a few times, but I wanted to post it here today, alongside the 200 week SMA. With the exception of the 2022 bear market which was driven significantly deeper by the collapse of FTX and others, the 200 week simple moving average has been the standard floor for Bitcoin’s price over its entire history.
What production cost adds to that is a ribbon where the raw electrical cost forms the lower end, and electrical cost plus overheads forms the upper end.
Over the course of its history Bitcoin has rarely fallen below its raw electrical cost. Of course it has a difficulty adjustment that ensures this can never be the case for long, but unlike 2022 where costs cratered lower along with the price, hash rate has remained strong with only a small ~5k drop in production cost, and this has actually rebounded a little since.
These three values currently sit at:
Total Production Cost: 78k
200 week SMA: 59k
Raw Production Cost: 55k
Because production costs are quite flat and because the raw cost is quite close to the 200 WMA, I think it is a fair assumption that there isn’t a lot of downside available below 60k. A final, temporary drop down into the mid-50s wouldn’t change the game from my perspective, and it may be what is needed to finally reset the chart.
On the upside, miners really need to get back into profit, and that area lies up in the 80s or higher. I have to admit I was a little more bullish last month than I am today, so I’m a bit on the fence here as to the short term direction, but hopefully we can clarify that to some degree in our Elliott Wave technical analysis next.
Elliott Wave Analysis
I can’t remember if I mentioned this previously, but a couple of months ago TradingView glitched and deleted all of my Elliott Wave counts on the Bitcoin chart, so I lost my extremely detailed long-term count that went all the way back to Bitcoin’s inception! I have since only recounted from the 2022 lows. There are obviously multiple counts to rebuild, so unfortunately I can’t post a full historical count in this newsletter today, as I would like to. Rest assured though, I have other records of that count and I am working on rebuilding it as soon as possible. I can’t wait to include that in a future newsletter.
Primary Count
Our primary count remains the same. Because Bitcoin has gone sideways there has been no reason to make any particular adjustments.
To summarise this, 5 clear impulsive waves higher, followed by a flat ABC corrective structure, wave B putting in the most recent 126k high, and then wave C extending down to 1.618 times the length of wave A. It’s textbook stuff, and the low is supported by similarly extreme values on the RSI, as per other macro cycle lows.
However, where I am starting to consider other options is due to this sideways, slightly upsloping consolidation that has been occurring in the current range. While Bitcoin’s refusal to dump with stocks shows relative strength, the structure it is painting while holding the line unfortunately resembles a classic bear flag. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck!
We talked about where the 200 week SMA and raw electrical cost currently sit, in that 55-59k range, so it makes sense to think about a count that could support a final leg down into that area. Basically a retest of the low, with a longer wick. Most of my other counts expect at least some rebound higher from the 60k level, but this hasn’t materialised, or at least not yet.
Alternate Count
The alternate and bearish count then is an updated and reworked version of the ending-diagonal count that I had posted previously.
To summarise this, we’ve got 5 waves up, with an ending diagonal converging to our Wave 1 peak. Subsequently a combination WXY takes us down to around 50k, with a target box at 47-56k.
Obviously this takes us lower than our 55-59k range as previously mentioned, but with some overlap, and this range is constructed from three fibs:
For a shorter final move, the 0.618 extension of wave C in Y, at 56k.
For a deeper final move, the 1:1 extension of wave C in Y, at 47k.
Also for a deeper final move, the 1.618 extension of wave Y in 2, also at 47k.
I don’t think there is much point in developing a bearish alternate count if it doesn’t give us a more significant low, and in particular I think it should be something that we do not expect, so this is the result of that analysis. Bitcoin is notorious for producing long wicks, so I think this should account for that also.
If we only saw a brief retest of the 60k low, or maybe a little lower down to 57, 58 or something like that, I would be able to incorporate that into the primary count without too much trouble.
In the meantime I think we just have to wait and see. There are obviously some other scenarios where price could bounce up higher first, and if equities bottom this leg down soon, then perhaps SPX and BTC could bounce up higher together.
On the subject of “when”, I think that if Bitcoin goes lower it is more likely to do it sooner rather than later, and so unless macro doesn’t play along, I expect the low to be confirmed one way or the other over the next few months, before the end of Q2.
4 Year Cycle Alternate
Because this is a bit of a catch-up issue, I’m also going to quickly include the 4-year cycle count for completeness.
This is one of those alternate counts where we would expect price to bounce up first, and in this case, it’s really a direct representation of the same ABC that we could see on stocks. However, I think sentiment is so bad at the moment that an earlier low, if not already in, is the more likely option.
If we are looking at an ABC on the stock market that leads us into Q3 or Q4 of this year before it completes, then I am sceptical that Bitcoin would mirror this action. Remember, Bitcoin started its ABC correction much earlier, last year, so perhaps the first leg of the drop on stocks, when that finally completes, pushes Bitcoin to its ultimate low. However, because Bitcoin usually front-runs the market, the second low on the stock market later in the year could just be a pullback in an uptrend on Bitcoin.
To summarise the Elliott Wave analysis then, I often get some comments on X where people say things like, “If you’re bullish then why are you posting bearish Elliott Wave counts?” etc., so I just want to clarify a few things. It is the job of an Elliottician to cover all scenarios. Just because I offer bearish charts doesn’t mean that I am bearish. I think it is important to spend some time trying to break your bias and look at analysis that does not support your view. If all we do is find data that supports our bias, then we will always be surprised when things don’t work out.
The primary count, or a version of it where we retest the low in the short term, is where my bias currently sits. This is because of the macro analysis that I do, where I think we are in the business cycle, and the fact I always try to marry up technical and macro analysis as much as I can. I believe that these should go hand in hand.
If this doesn’t work out, the alternate counts above give you some sense of what else may occur, and no one should be surprised if we need to adopt one of these as our primary count in the future. We just have to be objective and flexible.
My thesis currently relies on continued expansion, and in particular a recovery in liquidity conditions preferably sooner rather than later; however, the main theme that comes out of all of these counts is the fact we are looking for a Wave 2 bottom. The personality of a Wave 2 correction is defined by extreme fear, pessimism, and a widespread conviction that the bear market is fully entrenched. What comes next is more important, as Wave 3 is the most powerful wave and it is where all the gains are made. At this stage in a Wave 2 correction, I am thinking almost exclusively around the idea of being well positioned for Wave 3.
Bitcoin Dominance
A quick update to the Bitcoin Dominance chart. There’s not a lot of data here, only two cycles, and one of those came from 100% dominance. Some analysts spend a long time on this chart. I think it’s mostly because it gets a lot of engagement from altcoiners. I prefer to take it with a pinch of salt.
From the left then, we see a sharp decline in dominance as Bitcoin reaches its 2017 parabolic peak, and then during 2018 and 2019, it climbs back to around 72%.
When that peak forms, Bitcoin falls into a considerable correction for around 6 months, and dominance also declines somewhat. I’ve marked this 6-month period with two vertical lines, and I’ve also marked the most recent peak in dominance with a similar 6-month period of decline.
I think these two areas look very similar on the chart, but missing from the end is the sharp decline that leads to Bitcoin’s next parabolic top. In my opinion, this is still pending and we will see this when we enter Wave 3, and that’s the setup that I think we have ahead of us.
Altcoins
I haven’t covered any altcoins for quite a long time, mostly because I didn’t feel conditions were right. However, looking at the altcoin dominance chart today, the setup for crypto looks very appealing, and I’ve personally been busy building positions for some time.
Altcoin Dominance
Structurally, the two down-trending channels look extremely similar, and whilst the timespan is much longer in the more recent channel, I think it is also quite easy to argue that the bottom is in.
You may also notice that while the first down-trending channel occurred during a Bitcoin bear market and re-accumulation phase, this second much larger channel also started in a Bitcoin bear market, but then just kept going down for years, while Bitcoin recovered and kept going up. So what’s up with that then? Let’s remove the Bitcoin chart and replace it with the ISM.
Ahh, that’s better! I’ve zoomed out a little so we can actually see all three down-trending channels, but more striking is the strong correlation to the ISM.
So how do we rationalise the discrepancy between Bitcoin and Altcoins here? Why do they appear to be out of cycle with each other? My view is actually that we have been in crypto winter for a long time, an economic contraction that has been easy to visualise on our proprietary Macro Trend Oscillator, or simply on the ISM chart above, and those conditions have not been favourable for crypto.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, has been going through its own separate institutional and sovereign adoption phase, and 4-year cycle. Huge entities, buying huge quantities of Bitcoin, but it was a cycle that was notably weak.
There is so much argument around whether it is the 4-year cycle or the business cycle, but I think the reality is that it is both, and the overlap of these cycles in the past has amplified the result. Earlier cycles driven more by the 4-year halving cycle have diminished over time as a higher percentage of coins are mined, giving way to later cycles that have been driven more by liquidity. This transition has occurred seamlessly because these two cycles have been in sync.
However, inflation off the back of COVID stimulus, and the subsequent period of high rates suppressed liquidity, causing these cycles to drift apart. Hence, in the most recent cycle we had a diminished halving cycle alongside a suppressed business cycle, and that is why I think we saw an overall lack of strength.
These are some of the reasons why the cycle may be changing, and whilst we don’t know exactly what the new shape will look like yet, I think that liquidity will ultimately remain dominant going forwards. We can see from the chart above that it is almost certainly already the case for the broader crypto market, and this is a correlation we can also observe vs the Russell 2000, as previously discussed.
Let’s chart some altcoins…
Ethereum (ETH)
The ETH chart has been quite lacklustre for a long time; in fact, since its 2021 highs it’s traded in a massive choppy sideways range, albeit with some big swings. For those with absolute conviction, Ethereum has given its investors many opportunities to add to their positions below $2000 since the 2022 lows, and we are there again right now.
Starting with the most recent impulse and correction, ETH has retraced almost 90% of its move up.
I have this labelled as a simple 1-2, and the consolidation structure since the $1750 low looks similar to Bitcoin’s. For Ethereum, however, despite the similarity, I favour the low being in due to the nature of the larger count which we will discuss next. If price were to fall below $1384, not only would this 1-2 count be invalidated, but also the entire count since May 2021.
The boxed area is a section of the chart that I had tried to find a suitable impulsive count for previously, but eventually decided to label as a large sideways combination Wave 4 instead. The idea being that the low set in 2025 would form the starting point for a new impulsive structure.
Initially this has looked quite good, but with this current wave 2 correction running so deep, I am starting to wonder. Because the leg down is quite similar in structure to Bitcoin’s, we can just apply a very similar alternate count to get a more bearish target. I haven’t charted it here, but it measures out to around $1200.
There is a bit of room left yet though, and if we reference the 2022 bear, Ethereum bottomed in June and did not make new lows with Bitcoin. Fingers crossed.
Solana (SOL)
I’m getting déjà vu on the Solana chart as it is quite similar overall to Bitcoin. Five waves up and then a correction starting around the same time; Solana has clearly been in a bear market for more than a year.
The B wave did not make new highs like Bitcoin, so we have a zig-zag correction instead of a flat; however, the most recent leg down is extremely similar in structure once again. Because of this, we have the same question marks, and we can apply the same alternate idea to get a more bearish target. I won’t chart it here, but for reference, if the lows don’t hold the next target could be as low as $40.
Bittensor (TAO)
TAO is a huge favourite of mine personally; it is my major investment in crypto besides Bitcoin. I’m extremely bullish on the project; I’ve been buying TAO consistently for a long time, and I intend to continue for as long as it makes sense to do so.
I don’t know if it’s just the exchange that I am using for my TAO chart, but it has a lot of long wicks and is pretty messy overall. However, it’s the only chart I can find that shows the full price history, so we will just have to put up with that. After the initial impulse, I’ve labelled the correction as best I can as a huge WXYXZ ‘triple three’, which we can use to help describe extended consolidations.
TAO has been ranging in this massive structure for 2 years, but we’ve just seen the first signs of something that could finally be a real impulsive breakout. There are very few charts showing any life at the moment, so it’s quite exciting to see this development here and it’s a real breath of fresh air after looking at all these identical charts.
At the moment we don’t yet have a full five wave count off the low that we would need to qualify this as an impulse, but it looks pretty good so far, and I’ve telegraphed rough positions for the next few labels that I would need to see.
Bittensor is extremely well positioned to benefit from AI and DePIN narratives, and we’ve already seen some of the businesses that operate as subnets within the network publicly mentioned by both Nvidia and Intel for their technology and achievements. There is a possibility that TAO is leading the market, but I will reserve judgement until we see a more complete impulse.
SUI
Sui is another project that I’ve been bullish on for a long time. I know that it has become very popular due to Raoul Pal’s involvement on the board, but actually it’s something I had started a position on long before I was aware of that fact.
I’ve left the labelling relatively sparse on this chart today. Sui is showing a lot more weakness than the other coins we’ve covered, and it really does look like it wants to go lower. The next target would be 60 to 70 cents if the current 79-cent low is lost, and I would be a buyer again at those levels.
VELO
Velo is a project that I have on my shortlist; it’s the only asset I’m covering today that I don’t have some exposure to, but it’s a popular low-cap project with a strong development roadmap and a clean chart that is easy to count.
Since we looked at this last time, the low has held well, and whilst it hasn’t made a lot of progress, it is showing some strength where others are not. Great little project that I will be keeping my eye on.
Just an overall note about our Altcoin analysis, which also applies to Bitcoin: There is limited value in trying to break down and understand these sideways consolidations in Elliott Wave terms, because all of these assets are trading in a range and just produce this very choppy and unconvincing price action which would inevitably need to be counted and recounted and recounted again. For this reason I’ve stopped short of zooming in and providing potential counts for those structures.
I think it is best at this time to wait for those ranges to break. While the lows are being protected, we can leave our current wave 2 labelling in place, and then we can revisit these charts again and adjust as necessary.
Closing Thoughts
This has been a sizeable update, so I’ve tried to summarise each section a bit more as I go this time; otherwise, there would just be too much to put together here at the end.
However, reflecting on the markets as a whole and everything that we’ve discussed here today, I think there are some obvious causes for concern, in particular around Oil and how this latest conflict may affect the markets in the near term. This raises questions around short-term liquidity, which we can clearly see has tightened in our indicators, and we know that Bitcoin and Crypto are extremely sensitive to liquidity.
From a technical perspective, while I think the meat of the move down is probably done, or close to done, we are still stuck waiting for a potential final low and some more clarity around a bottom for Bitcoin. I do think that this liquidity squeeze, as I’ve titled this article, will be what delivers that clarity, one way or the other, but at least we have targets and we know what the potential outcomes could be.
Sentiment is obviously at rock bottom at the moment. I haven’t even cared to look at fear and greed indicators recently as they’ve just been so extreme for so long, but let’s take a look. Right now it is Extreme Fear (10) for the stock market, and Extreme Fear (9) for crypto! Well, I guess that is no surprise, but I do have Warren Buffett rattling around in my brain saying “be greedy when others are fearful”.
So macro and technical uncertainty, and a significant stock market correction are all feeding back into the sentiment we see every day on Crypto Twitter, but once we get past that and start looking at the technical structures and the overall macro setup, things immediately look a lot better. We always tell people to zoom out, so it’s no surprise that when we do this, it helps to maintain a more balanced perspective.
For Bitcoin, proximity to the 200-week simple moving average is a typical bottoming signal, and because I’m not sitting up late at night when the US markets are open, hoping to catch a wick, I’m just going to DCA across whatever comes next. I’ll apply that same principle to altcoins as well, although I’ll be a bit more selective where I place my buys on those more volatile assets. We just looked at the altcoin dominance chart and there is no doubt that it’s a bullish chart. I think that a lot of the risk has already played out, and I can minimise risk further through the careful asset choices that I am making, such as the very limited list of altcoins I’ve included today.
Short-term risks may actually create more opportunity, and I think that is the right mindset at this stage. Having gone through all of the analysis that forms the basis of the overall thesis, I don’t see any glaring holes or major problems. In fact, while the timeline may have shifted out a little, the Wave 3 setup looks as solid as ever.
If the ISM comes in positive next week, that will continue to reinforce our business cycle analysis, and then I think we just have to be patient. I’m looking forward to getting back to regular updates (shorter ones of course!), so with that wrapped up, please take care and I’ll see you in the next one!
Disclaimer: This content is for informational and research purposes only, reflects the author’s opinion, and is not financial, investment or trading advice. The cryptocurrency market is volatile; invest at your own risk and only what you can afford to lose. Past performance does not guarantee future results.