The crypto market enters the second week of July in rough shape.
Bitcoin is holding on, but just barely, in the low $60,000s after briefly touching 21-month lows under $58,000 last week. Ethereum is below $1,750, down around 4% on the day, and more than 30% in the last year. The broader market is down, of course, and altcoins are down harder.
The total crypto market cap excluding BTC and ETH shed 30% since January. Crypto IPOs—Gemini, Bullish, BitGo—have imploded since their debut.
The mood is, understandably, grim.
But grim moods have a long history of being wrong at exactly the wrong time. Every major Bitcoin bear cycle since 2009 has ended with a flush, an extreme fear reading, and a moment where the obvious trade looked like going short.
The difference this cycle? Crypto is now mainstream.
Bitcoin price: optimism with an asteriskBitcoin opened the week at $63,587, hit a high of $64,657, then closed lower, meaning that the bulls showed up, tried to push through, and failed. Bitcoin is trading hands at $61,749, down 2.89% in the week.
It’s important to note that BTC fell to $58,035 just days ago—a 21-month low—before bouncing.
Zooming out on the weekly chart, the Fibonacci retracement (natural support and resistance zones that happen during a trend) of that entire downleg from $82,833 places the $73,245 and $70,284 zone as with the most activity.
The Average Directional Index, or ADX, is at 30.7. The ADX measures trend strength regardless of direction on scale from 0 to 100. When it’s above 25, this tells traders that an actual trend is in place, and 30.7 is solidly there. Based on directionality, bears are in control.
The Relative Strength Index, or RSI, sits at 36.8. RSI measures momentum, similarly on a 0–100 scale: Above 70 signals overbought conditions and usually triggers profit-taking; below 30 signals oversold conditions that typically attract buyers. At 36.8, Bitcoin is close to oversold but hasn't crossed the threshold yet. The technical setup suggests selling pressure may be approaching exhaustion—but "approaching" isn't "done." Right now markets appear to be panic selling.
One note of caution for the bears: The picture painted by the exponential moving averages remains bullish. Bitcoin's 50-week exponential moving average, or EMA, is still above its 200-week EMA. When this happens, it forms a pattern that traders refer to as a “golden cross,” which in this case is technically still intact. But it's narrowing fast. The inverse of a golden cross is a death cross, and if it forms on the weekly chart it would represent a structural shift that very few Bitcoin cycles have survived without a deeper flush first.
Thankfully for permabulls, this has not happened in a while.
Reasons for the bullish case are mostly fundamental:
Spot Bitcoin ETFs just snapped a 10-day, $2.7 billion outflow streak with a $221.7 million single-day inflow on July 2, and have since pulled in roughly $510 million. On-chain data from Glassnode shows long-term holders have returned to accumulation after an extended period of distribution, with buying activity broadening across wallet cohorts.
The Fear & Greed Index at 23, registering “extreme fear,” is historically a contrarian signal—not a guarantee, but a pattern. Some indicators approaching oversold from the weekly chart suggest the selling may be closer to exhausted than just starting.
For the bearish scenario, the technicals are more apparent for those focusing on shorter time frames:
Ethereum price: The death cross nobody wantedEthereum is trading at $1,729.7, down 3.06% from its $1,784 weekly open. That number is painful enough. But the bigger story isn't the weekly candle—it's what just happened on the weekly chart under the hood.
Ethereum has just confirmed a weekly death cross. The 50-week exponential moving average has crossed below the 200-week EMA for the first time in years. The upcoming days/weeks will be key to define positions for long-term trades if the cross extends and is not invalidated.
On shorter timeframes, death crosses happen regularly and can reverse quickly. On the weekly chart, they represent months of structural deterioration, and they tend to define entire market phases rather than single moves.
Ethereum's daily chart has been in death cross since November 2025, when ETH peaked near $4,100 before beginning its extended decline. That daily bearish structure has now propagated to the weekly frame—a longer-timeframe confirmation that the bear trend isn't a blip.
The Fibonacci retracement on ETH's downleg from $2,465.8 to $1,505.1 defines the zone between $2,098.9 and $1,985.5 as the ones with the most activity to watch for. Current price at $1,729.7 is pinned near the Fib level at $1,731.8. Below that, the next meaningful technical reference is the $1,500 price zone. That's exactly the doom scenario Myriad traders are betting on.
The ADX reads 26.5 with bearish directionality—same story as Bitcoin, just more pronounced. A trend is confirmed, the direction is down, and the bears have the momentum. RSI at 36.9 mirrors Bitcoin's reading almost exactly: bearish, approaching oversold but not there yet.
Some hopium for the bulls: Weekly death crosses on Ethereum have historically appeared around the final stages of bear market cycles—not the middle of them. In prior cycles, the three-day death cross frequently coincided with or immediately preceded significant bottoms. In other words, this is the panic zone in which many people wait to buy the asset for cheap.
If that pattern holds, the pain may be closer to ending than beginning. ETH spot ETFs turned positive on July 2 with $29.1 million in inflows. RSI is approaching oversold on the weekly—a zone that has historically been a strong accumulation signal for patient buyers.
The Fibonacci target of $1,500 is technically the next major level, and it's the exact number Myriad's 72.3% majority is betting on. Citi's bear case for ETH is $1,094. The weekly structure doesn't give bulls much to work with until the price of Ethereum reclaims the $2,000 area—a 15.6% climb from current levels that would require a sustained trend reversal that no indicator yet confirms.
