Bitcoin (BTC) has changed a lot in four years, distancing itself from the centralized shaded entities like FTX and emerging as the dish of the day among institutional investors. However, the six-digit this month’s car in the middle of cooling pricing tensions has a number of preliminary signs that seem strangely similar to cycle 2021.
In 2021, Bitcoin made a historic record in April of $ 65,000, coinciding with a wave of activity of Michael Saylor’s microstrategia (then named) and the Introduction on Coinbase (Coin). The excitement was capitalized by Shrewd merchants, who short-circuited the big news and drove BTC to a possible low at $ 28,000 two months later.
Then, while the whole industry began to prepare for a sustained bear market or even at the end of Bitcoin (remember the Chinese mining ban), BTC turned your tail and started a rally that did not stop for four months. This relentless increase increased has led to a new record of $ 69,000, despite all the measures on the chain pointing towards a lower result.
In a disturbing way, the current price action this time is accompanied by these same chain metrics telling a similar story on a double high potential.
A deeper dive
The first of these measures is the weekly RSI, which has three down divergence strikes from March 2024, December 2024 and May 2025. RSI is an indicator that compares the gains averages with average losses over a defined period to assess the potentially surflices or surfoux conditions. The downward divergence is the place where RSI is down while the price is upward trend.
This, associated with trading volumes which are inferior compared to the initial displacement above $ 100,000, suggests that the momentum of this higher swing is down. The volumes are down both in crypto and institutional places, the volume on term contracts on CME BTC not exceeding 35,000 contracts in three of the previous four weeks. The initial movement has seen volumes regularly exceeding 65,000 contracts, reaching more than 85,000 on three times. A CME contract is worth 5 bitcoin ($ 514,000).
As in 2021, open interests also diverge from pricing, the interests open of 13% are currently below the initial allowance at $ 109,000 in January while the price is only 5.8% lower. Four years ago, when Bitcoin reached $ 69,000, open interest was 15.6% lower than the initial height of $ 65,000 despite the price of 6.6%.
What does that mean?
The similarities with 2021 are clear, but it should be noted that the structure of the cryptography market is entirely different from four years ago. Especially thanks to Michael Saylor’s strategy and an increasing number of corporate copycates that increase the acquisitions of the BTC at all costs, the presence of institutional interest is much higher in this cycle. There is also the element of Bitcoin Spot ETF, which allows investors and intuitive companies to acquire BTC in a traditional regulated place.
As learned in 2021, chain measures can be an inaccurate measurement of forecast price action. The BTC may break a new record after Trump inevitably made details on an American Bitcoin Treasury, but this could also become a “new event to sell”, in which traders are trying to capitalize on emotional purchases from uninformed retail investors.
What the indicators suggest is that if a new record could be formed as in 2021, the momentum of this decision is decreasing and analysts who boldly call $ 150,000 or even the price targets of $ 200,000 could be in a coarse Awakening once the sale is really starting. Bitcoin has entered more than one drop -down market from one year at the end of 2021, which led to substantial layoffs in industry and the implosion of several negotiation companies, centralized loan companies and DEFI protocols.
This time, the market has several other elements to consider if prices are starting to tumble. In particular, the BTC position with MSTR lever effect, the emerging industry of BTC DEFI which has $ 6.3 billion of total locked value (TVL), and the billions of sparkling dollars which bounce around the samecoin ecosystem, which is known to contract disproportionately during
