Here’s what the charts suggest is happening next

The crypto market is not buying what the Fed is selling. Despite the Federal Reserve cutting its rate by 25 basis points expected on Wednesday to a range of 3.5%-3.75%, Bitcoin and Ethereum are both in the red, the broader crypto market at $3.07 trillion, down 2.25% from yesterday.

While traditional markets returned to the news, crypto took a different path. The S&P 500 closed down 0.67% and the Nasdaq gained 0.42%, but digital assets hemorrhaged value. The disconnect may suggest traders are reassessing future liquidity conditions despite lower borrowing costs.

According to CoinMarketCap data, about 90% of the cryptocurrency market is in the red today, with some of them close to the top 10 by market cap suffering double-digit losses.

So what’s going on under the hood? Let’s break down what the graphs tell us:

Bitcoin is trading at $89,977, down 2.24% in the last 24 hours. The price hit a high of $92,103 before sellers intervened, pushing BTC back towards the psychologically critical $90,000 and confirming our earlier analysis: this recent rally was not a trend reversal and could just be a peak in a broader bearish move.

Price action continues to follow the downtrend line that has been in place since the October peak around $126,000. That peak now feels like a distant memory as Bitcoin struggles to hold psychological support at $90,000.

Let’s talk technical: Bitcoin’s relationship to its exponential moving averages, or EMA, shows a price movement still in dead territory. EMAs take the average price of an asset over the short, medium and long term and help traders identify the direction of the trend by smoothing this price action.

When the faster moving 50-day price average crosses below the slower 200-day average, it forms what traders refer to as a death cross pattern and usually signals bearish momentum.

Right now, Bitcoin is trading well below its average price over the past 50 and 200 days. BTC’s upward move was recently rejected as it crossed the 50-day EMA and could not break the downtrend line around $100,000.

The Relative Strength Index, or RSI, is at 44.23. The RSI measures momentum on a scale of 0 to 100, with readings below 50 indicating more selling pressure than buying. At 44, Bitcoin is not oversold enough to attract aggressive bargain hunters, but it is clearly in bear territory. Traders typically look for the RSI to drop below 30 (deeply oversold) before betting on a bounce.

The Average Directional Index – ADX for short – measures the strength of the trend, regardless of direction. Readings above 25 signal that a trend is real and has legs; below 20 means the market is directionless. The Bitcoin ADX at 28.15 confirms that this downtrend is strong and the sellers are in control.

Bitcoiners, however, still seem pretty bullish, all things considered. On Myriad, a prediction market created by decryptsIts parent company, Dastan, 69% of the money betting on Bitcoin’s next move is taking the bullish line: Most traders still think BTC is more likely to reach $100,000 before falling to $69,000.

Even more telling: the countless market wondering if “Crypto Winter is coming” has traders placing odds of 90% on “no”. Translation: Traders are rattled by volatility, but long-term convictions remain surprisingly strong.

Ethereum is having an even tougher run, down 4.40% to $3,178.8 today. The second largest cryptocurrency by market cap opened at $3,324.3 and continued to lose around $146.2 through the session, hitting a low of $3,146.4 before stabilizing slightly.

Ethereum’s move almost created a golden cross scenario – the opposite of a death cross – but it failed.

Unlike Bitcoin, ETH was able to break above its immediate resistance (dotted white line in the chart above) and even the EMA50, but could not break above the EMA200 line. That’s a problem. This suggests that while Ethereum briefly showed strength, the long-term bear structure remains intact. For a golden cross to form and hold, you need a clean break above the 200-day EMA, followed by several closes above it. I didn’t understand that.

The RSI for Ethereum shows 51.24 — technically neutral territory, but just barely. This is the crypto equivalent of a currency: neither bulls nor bears have a decisive advantage based on momentum alone. Typically, traders consider RSI above 70 as overbought (time to take profit) and below 30 as oversold (time to buy). At 51 years old, Ethereum is stuck in no man’s land.

Like Bitcoin, many of Ethereum’s technical strategies are aligned with a short setup with a -41% bearish score. The Ichimoku cloud is red and expanding, the price is following a descending channel, and the volume profiles show that most of the trading activity is concentrated at higher levels, which means that many holders are underwater.

What is interesting is, once again, the disconnect between price action and prediction markets. On Myriad, the sentiment shifts cautiously optimistic. The market asking traders to predict Ethereum’s next move – a pump to $4,000 or a dump to $2.5K – now shows 50-50 odds – a dramatic change from late November, when 90% of the money was betting on $2.5K.

The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment or other advice.