Two roads to the same place, and the place is seventy thousand

What is the rate of change, and what do I ask of it?

When bitcoin goes negative on this measure, it has historically corrected to levels that repeat: minus twenty-two percent, minus thirty-four and a half, minus forty-seven and a half, and in extreme cases minus fifty-eight. That last one is the black swan scenario, and for now I’m leaving it aside.

One calendar detail matters more than it seems. The measure is most reliable when the ninety days land right on the period’s peak. The highest close was October 6, at $124,659, so the useful window for the first target closes around mid-November. After that the reference price slides and the levels drop by three to five thousand dollars, which makes a real difference when you have to decide.

First scenario: the correction now

From November 13 on the numbers change, but the reasoning stays the same. The ninety-day reference drops, and the same twenty-two percent correction moves the target to ninety-one thousand. A gap of three to five thousand dollars starts to matter when you have to decide where to place an order.

If the market wants to finish a serious correction, though, it rarely stops at the first level. The second takes bitcoin toward sixty-eight thousand, and that’s where the zone gets interesting, because it lines up almost exactly with the lows of April 2025.

Second scenario: a month sideways, then the second leg

There’s a precise reason for that timing. It would land ninety days after the October peak, the point where the measure becomes reliable again. And it would let the rate of change reach more negative values even with a higher price. A twenty-two percent correction at that point would take bitcoin back to between ninety-eight and a hundred thousand, drawing a double bottom.

But the same reasoning applies as before. Real capitulation throws out everyone who bought with leverage and makes everyone say the bear market has started. A double bottom at ninety-eight thousand isn’t enough for that, and the odds of reaching the second level are far from negligible.

Put bluntly: there are two ways to get to seventy thousand, quick and now or slow and painful with a false hope in the middle, and in the end the price stops where there’s liquidity to liquidate.

Why sixty-eight to seventy-four thousand?

The first is the rate of change’s statistical level, minus thirty-four and a half percent. The second is the April 2025 lows, which on the chart are where a structural correction tends to stop. The third is more psychological than technical. To make people who bought high capitulate, you need a move that breaks something in their heads, and a return to the April lows, maybe piercing them for a few hours, is exactly that kind of move.

Computed from our highest close on October 6 those levels land a little differently from how I wrote them at the time: minus thirty-four and a half gives eighty-two thousand, minus forty-seven and a half gives sixty-five thousand, and the April zone sits in between. The gap depends on which peak you take as the reference, and it’s why these targets should be read as zones more than prices.

What do I do with it, in practice?

First scenario: an immediate correction toward 94–96 thousand dollars, with a possible extension. Second scenario: a month sideways and a second fall toward 98–100 thousand, with the same possible extension. Where both lead, if the correction runs its course: a low by year end between 80 and 70 thousand.

What the rate of change won’t tell you, and it’s the part everyone skips, is whether we’re in a bear market. It tells you where the market tends to stop when it corrects. Calling a bear market would be a forecast. The levels are a map, and I only trust the map.

In practice those levels are zones to watch, and leaving orders there blind would be a mistake. Over the next few days I’ll look at ethereum and solana with the same method. If the correction is uniform, the picture holds. If there are divergences, they are the information, because they mean someone is choosing where to stay instead of selling everything.