Bitcoin (BTC) price action is sending mixed signals after the asset touched $80,000, with traders divided over the market’s next move.

Key points:

• Bitcoin’s weekly relative strength index (RSI) has reached 58.3, repeating a bullish divergence that also appeared near the end of the 2022 bear market.
• Daily RSI has climbed to its most “overbought” reading since November 2024, near 83.
• Stochastic RSI has produced a key crossover, but without revisiting the near-zero lows seen in previous bear-market setups.

Weekly RSI echoes Bitcoin’s 2022 bear-market bottom

RSI readings across daily, weekly and two-month time frames have added to the debate over whether last week’s 25% rebound in Bitcoin will continue.

RSI is a standard momentum indicator that measures an asset’s average gain or loss over a lookback period, typically 14 days, to gauge the strength of the current trend. In Bitcoin’s case, bullish divergences with price — when RSI prints higher highs while BTC/USD makes lower lows — have often preceded major trend reversals.

In mid-2022, about six months before Bitcoin’s previous bear market ended, weekly RSI began forming a bullish divergence, making higher lows while BTC/USD continued to make lower lows. A similar pattern has developed throughout 2026, according to TradingView data.

BTC/USD one-week chart with RSI bullish divergences. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Although shorter-term RSI signals are generally less reliable as a guide to broader price trends, weekly readings have led some analysts to reconsider the status of the current bear market. That matters because momentum shifts on higher time frames are often watched closely in a market where sharp rebounds can blur the line between a short squeeze and a more durable trend change.

“Weekly is the timeframe that matters here, that’s where you read the secular trend and the cycle inflection points,” Jamie Coutts, chief crypto analyst at Real Vision, wrote in a post on X on Tuesday.

Coutts said weekly bullish divergences carry “real weight,” pointing to the upside that followed prior divergence events.

Weekly RSI currently stands at 58.3, its highest level since BTC/USD reached its latest all-time high of $126,200 in October 2025, after breaking above a pattern of lower highs. On the daily chart, RSI is now in “overbought” territory at 82.93.

BTC/USD one-day chart with RSI data. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Market participants remain split on what the daily readings mean. Some view them as a warning of an imminent reversal, while others note that Bitcoin uptrends have historically included multiple “overbought” periods, when RSI rises above 70.

In his latest analysis, Jonatan Randin, senior market analyst at crypto trading platform PrimeXBT, pointed to more similarities with late 2022. At that time, daily RSI rose from 40 to 90 during a single weekly candle.

“An extreme move like this usually signals the start of something new,” he told X followers.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that the bear market is over but it is telling us something. I think what it’s trying to tell us is that we are about to enter a new phase of this cycle.”

BTC/USD RSI comparison chart. Source: Jonatan Randin on X.com

Stochastic RSI prints anticipated crossover

Cointelegraph previously reported on expectations that Bitcoin’s two-month stochastic RSI would repeat historical patterns and offer a clear signal around the end of the bear market.

Stochastic RSI gives more weight to recent price moves, and a crossover between its two trend lines is often treated as a sign of a bullish trend shift. That crossover has now occurred. However, the indicator only reached 4.81, avoiding the macro lows near zero that preceded earlier crossovers.

BTC/USD two-month chart with stochastic RSI data. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView