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

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

When bitcoin enters negative territory on this measure, historically it corrects 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 am not considering it.

There is a detail of the calendar that counts more than it seems: the measure is most reliable when the ninety days land exactly on the peak of the period. The highest close is 6 October, 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 — a difference that genuinely changes decisions.

First scenario: the correction now

From 13 November on the sum changes, not the reasoning: the ninety-day reference falls, and the same minus twenty-two percent correction takes the target to ninety-one thousand. Three to five thousand dollars of difference start to count when you have to decide what price to leave an order at.

If the market wants to complete a serious correction, though, it rarely stops at the first level. The second takes bitcoin toward sixty-eight thousand, and there is the thing that makes the zone interesting: it coincides almost exactly with the lows of April 2025.

Second scenario: a month sideways, then the second leg

That calendar isn’t accidental: it would be ninety days after the October peak, the point at which the measure becomes reliable again. And it would let the rate of change reach more negative values even with a higher absolute 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 as before applies: to create real capitulation, the kind that throws out whoever bought with leverage and makes everyone say the bear market has begun, a double bottom at ninety-eight thousand isn’t enough. The chance that it extends to the second level isn’t negligible.

Put bluntly: there are two ways to get to seventy thousand, straight away and fast or slow and painful with a false hope in the middle, and in the end the price stops where there is liquidity to liquidate.

Why sixty-eight to seventy-four thousand specifically

The first is the statistical level of the rate of change, minus thirty-four and a half percent. The second is the lows of April 2025, which in a reading of the chart are where a structural correction tends to stop. The third is more psychological than technical: to make whoever bought high capitulate takes a move that breaks something in the head, and going back to April’s lows — piercing them for a few hours — is exactly that kind of move.

On our highest close of 6 October those levels fall a little higher than I wrote them at the time: minus thirty-four and a half gives eighty-two thousand, minus forty-two gives seventy-two thousand. The difference depends on which peak you take as the reference, and it is why these targets have to be read as zones and not as prices.

What I do with it, operationally

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. Third scenario: a bounce and a low by year end between 80 and 70 thousand.

What the rate of change doesn’t say — and this is the part everyone skips — is whether we are in a bear market. It says where the market tends to stop when it corrects. The first is a forecast, the second is a map of levels, and I only trust the map.

Operationally those levels are zones to watch, not orders to leave in the dark. And over the coming days I will look at ethereum and solana with the same method: if the correction is uniform, the picture confirms; if there are divergences, the divergence is the information — because it means somebody is choosing where to stay instead of leaving everything.