Bitcoin (BTC) traded 4.5% below Thursday’s $74,000 threshold, and traders are divided on whether this level could represent a local top for the BTC price.
Key considerations:
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Bitcoin charts still show similarities with the 2022 bear cycle, with a possible break below $60,000.
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Others say it is bearish and expect a breakout rally to $75,000-$80,000 in the future.
Will the 2022 BTC price cycle repeat itself?
BTC’s current technical structure, after the recent recovery from $60,000, shows similarities with the averages of past bearish periods.
Bitcoin’s last rally to $74,000 came 149 days after reaching the peak of the bull market at $126,000 in October 2025.
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“$BTC reached a local high about 140-150 days after its highs of the previous two periods before declining,” Bitcoin Hyper analyst X wrote in a post on Thursday.
With this in mind, Bitcoin trader Isaiah called the rally to $74,000 a “top local indicator” and pointed to premature celebrations by the bulls as a signal for further dumping.
The analyst pointed to the 2022 period, when similar euphoria preceded a 68% crash from $48,200 to $15,500, suggesting that history may repeat itself with a visit to the $60,000 level.
The crypto master said the brief pump above $70,000 was a liquidity trap, eliminating both shorts and longs before targeting the lower $62,000 to $65,000 areas, where more bid orders are located, adding:
“Price tends to go where the bigger money sits.”
As reported by Cointelegraph, signs of a pullback appeared this week after a rally to $74,000, a classic chart pattern of a bearish bearish and key upper resistance.
Is Bitcoin’s rally over?
But bulls say $60,000 was the market low, indicating a structural change.
For example, crypto analyst Bitcoin Munger said that the 2022 Bitcoin bear fractal is not “bearish” because this cycle is different.
The accompanying chart showed that while the 2022 decline saw price “cut” the 200-week exponential moving average (EMA), the current one just retested the trendline and bounced back.
Meanwhile, analyst Mister Crypto says that the BTC/USD pair is breaking out of the ascending triangle, expecting a “strong upward move” if the upper trend line at $70,000 holds as support.
Other differences from the 2022 cycle include strong institutional ETF inflows and tightening supply, which could help Bitcoin avoid another crash and set it up for a rally to $75,000-$80,000.
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