Bitcoin is trading near $60,000 this weekend, and a chart signal from the relative strength index has traders comparing the current slump to the 2022 bear market low. The RSI is the same indi
Bitcoin is trading near $60,000 this weekend, and a chart signal from the relative strength index has traders comparing the current slump to the 2022 bear market low. The RSI is the same indicator that flagged the bottom near $15,600 four years ago.
BTC/USD sat around $59,900 to $60,200 as of June 29, based on data from TradingView and other trackers. That level has held for roughly a week, after the price dropped from above $74,000 at the start of June.
What The RSI Divergence MeansA bullish divergence happens when the price keeps making lower lows while the RSI, a momentum gauge, starts making higher lows instead. Traders read this gap as a sign that selling pressure is fading even as price keeps falling, often a precursor to a bounce.
On the four-hour chart, this divergence has now formed and been confirmed on the daily chart as well, according to analyst Lukasz Wydra. He pointed to Binance order book activity defending the price around current levels as a supporting sign, calling the setup an "encouraging sign" without claiming certainty.
Pseudonymous trader Rod drew the most direct line to 2022 in a post comparing both charts side by side, writing that the pattern looked identical. In 2022, a weekly RSI bullish divergence appeared right as BTC/USD bottomed near $15,600, a floor that held for over a year afterward.
How Bitcoin Got HereBitcoin peaked above $126,000 in October 2025, according to price-tracking data from multiple exchanges. Since then, the asset has dropped by roughly half, with the slide accelerating through May and June 2026.
Several forces piled on during the decline. Strategy, the corporate treasury firm led by Michael Saylor, saw its enterprise market-to-NAV ratio fall below 1 for the first time, meaning the value of its debt and equity now exceeds its roughly 847,000 BTC holdings. The firm kept buying anyway, adding 520 BTC on June 22 in its smallest recent purchase.
Network hashrate also fell about 12% in June as some miners shifted computing power toward AI workloads instead, based on CoinWarz mining data. Futures open interest dropped to a six-month low, and funding rates on perpetual contracts turned negative, a sign that leveraged short positions had grown more common than longs.
Fed officials added pressure too. Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari warned of possible rate hikes rather than cuts, a reversal from market expectations at the start of the year that weighed on Bitcoin alongside other risk assets.
The four-hour RSI bottomed at 11.4 in early June, one of its lowest readings on record, before the current divergence began forming.
Why Some Traders Expect Lower Prices FirstNot everyone treats the RSI divergence as the end of the story. Niels Klaver, cofounder of STABL Agency, has repeated his call for Bitcoin to test $55,000 before any move higher takes hold.
Analyst Rekt Capital takes a similar view but on a longer timeline. He expects a relief bounce in July, a month that has historically traded better than June, but warns that confirmation of the 50-month exponential moving average as resistance would set up another leg down in August, with $60,000 weakening as support along the way.
This split matters because RSI divergence does not guarantee an immediate reversal. In 2022, the divergence appeared at the actual bottom, but divergences can also form and then fail if selling resumes with enough force, pushing price to new lows before any real recovery starts.
What This Means For Bitcoin Right NowThe comparison to 2022 is technically grounded: both periods show the same RSI pattern at a similar stage of a prolonged decline. But the macro backdrop differs in some ways, with corporate balance sheet stress at Strategy and shifting Fed rate expectations adding variables that were less present in 2022.
For now, the $60,000 level is the line traders are watching most closely. A clean break below it would weaken the bullish case further, while continued defense of that price, combined with the confirmed RSI divergence, would add weight to the argument that history is repeating.
