Crypto Feels Dead… Market Update for this Week
Sideways markets are boring, and boring markets are where most people stop paying attention. That's usually the point where the underlying data starts to shift. This week's update walks through the total crypto market cap chart, the altcoin-only chart, and what volume, MACD, and RSI are currently saying on the weekly timeframe.
The Total Market Chart: Correction or Bear?
The total market topped in 2021, bottomed around December 2022, and trended upward from there. The current pullback was initially read as a correction — but it broke below the low of the previous correction, and that pattern typically points to a bear regime rather than a bull pause. The chart has also been repeating a down-then-sideways rhythm, which leaves open the possibility of one more leg down before anything changes.
On the weekly chart, three indicators matter here. Volume, which tends to lead price, dropped during earlier declines and has been ticking up during the recent sideways stretch. MACD has had blue below yellow since the cross, with the histogram still red — but the bars are shrinking, suggesting momentum may be shifting. RSI is the most interesting one: it reached roughly 28, deeply oversold, a level it hadn't touched since just before the last upward turn. Oversold means the sellers who wanted out have largely already sold.
If you want to follow this week to week rather than guess, it helps to understand how the total crypto market cap chart is constructed before drawing conclusions from any single indicator.
Why the Altcoin Chart Looks Different
The altcoin-only chart tells a stranger story. Its 2021 high was never reclaimed in 2025 — four years later, after significant inflation, after hundreds of new projects launched, and after many existing projects shipped real products and started generating revenue. That gap is why the argument that a genuine altcoin bull run hasn't happened yet is worth taking seriously.
The altcoin market is currently sitting near the $175 billion area, a level last visited back in 2023. A move back to and through the prior all-time high would represent roughly a 3x from here — with some coins lagging badly and others far exceeding it. It's also worth learning how the TOTAL2 and TOTAL3 charts separate altcoins from Bitcoin, because the two paint very different pictures right now.
Encouragingly, the altcoin MACD looks healthier than the total market's: the histogram is smaller and a cross appears possible.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the Accumulation Zone
If the turn isn't confirmed, going all in makes little sense. Dollar cost averaging keeps you participating without betting everything on a signal that hasn't fired yet.
Bitcoin's rainbow chart currently sits in the blue accumulation band — a zone it last visited around 2023 and, before that, 2020. Ethereum is close behind, also in accumulation, though not quite as low. Past behavior guarantees nothing, but historically those blue and light-green areas have been buy zones and the red bands have been sell zones. For assets you intend to hold for years rather than weeks, holding them inside a retirement account changes the tax math considerably — here's how to hold Bitcoin and Ethereum in a crypto IRA and what the structure involves.
Tax Season and Long-Term Positioning
It's late March, which means April 15 is close. If crypto moved between exchanges and wallets during the year, cost basis gets messy fast, and messy cost basis usually means overpaying. iTrustCapital has been my own long-term IRA home for years, and it's worth a look if tax-advantaged holding fits your plan. For the filing side, a specialist service is often cheaper than the mistake — see what's involved in filing crypto taxes across multiple wallets.
Market updates like this one come out weekly, alongside coverage of individual projects and tools. If you want the charts, the trading system, wallet and exchange walkthroughs, and daily discussion with people working through the same setups, the Crypto School community at skool.com/crypto-profit is where all of it lives for $39 a month.
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