Bitcoin RSI live: the current value across six timeframes

The number above is calculated the moment you open this page. What follows is what it takes for that number to mean anything, which matters considerably more than the number.

Bitcoin's RSI right now

How it is calculated

Three decisions worth knowing, because they explain why the RSI here may not match another site's exactly.

The source. BTCUSDT candles on Binance. There is no single Bitcoin price: every venue has its own, and although the differences are small, they are enough to move an RSI decimal. The only honest thing is to say where the data comes from.

The method. Wilder smoothing with a period of 14, which is the original and the default on nearly every platform. Some sites use an exponential or simple average instead of Wilder smoothing, and the result differs by several points.

The candle in progress. This is the point almost nobody mentions. Until the current candle closes, its closing price is simply the last traded price, so the RSI moves with every trade. An RSI of 71 on a daily candle at ten in the morning is not an RSI of 71: it is a forecast of where it would land if the day closed now. That is why the table also shows the value at the last close.

What it actually measures

The RSI compares the strength of advances with that of declines within the last fourteen candles, and summarises it on a 0 to 100 scale. It is a measure of recent travel, not of valuation or of future direction.

Put differently: an RSI of 75 does not say Bitcoin is expensive. It says that of everything that moved over the last fourteen candles, most of it moved up. Those are two very different claims, and confusing them is the origin of almost every mistake with this indicator.

70 and 30 are not signals

It is the most repeated idea and the most damaging: that above 70 you should sell and below 30 you should buy.

In a strong uptrend, Bitcoin's daily RSI can spend weeks above 70 while price keeps rising. Whoever sold on the touch of 70 missed the entire leg. And in a sustained decline the symmetric thing happens below 30.

Why the same number means different things

The context that completely changes the interpretation is whether the market is trending or ranging.

From which comes a little-known practical detail: in an uptrend the RSI tends to respect the area around 40 as a floor, and in a downtrend it tends to stall around 60. That floor or ceiling breaking says more about the state of the trend than any 70 or 30 crossing.

The six timeframes together

A single RSI in isolation says little. What informs is seeing them at once, because the combination describes the state of the market better than any one of them alone.

If the monthly and weekly are high and the one-hour is low, what you have is a small pullback inside a large trend. If it is the other way round — monthly low and hourly very high — what you have is a bounce inside a decline. These are opposite situations that a single number cannot tell apart.

The rule that saves trouble: the higher timeframe rules. An extreme reading on the hourly does not change what the weekly says, just as a four-hour divergence does not cancel a trend of months. It is explained in more detail in the three layers of Bitcoin analysis.

Divergences: the RSI's most valuable use

If the RSI is good for one thing above all others, it is spotting when price and strength stop telling the same story.

A bearish divergence is price making a higher high than the previous one while the RSI makes a lower one: the new high was achieved with less push. The bullish version is the mirror image, and in practice works somewhat better, because bottoms tend to form through exhaustion.

Two warnings. First: a divergence is not an entry signal, it is a warning of weakness that may take weeks to resolve or may never resolve. Second: on low timeframes divergences appear constantly and most of them mean nothing.

Common mistakes

Reading the in-progress candle's value as final. Until the candle closes, the number changes. On a daily chart, an RSI taken mid-morning can end the day several points higher or lower.

Comparing two assets' RSI as if they were equivalent. Each asset has its own typical behaviour: some coins' daily RSI rarely drops below 40 and others do it every week.

Changing the period until the signals fit. There is always a period that would have worked over the recent past. It is almost never the one that works from tomorrow.

Using it alone. The RSI measures neither volatility nor volume nor positioning. That is what the ATR, volume and the long/short ratio are for.

What to watch beside the RSI

Two indicators completely change the meaning of the reading above.

The BBWP says whether volatility is compressed or expanded. A high RSI with volatility still compressed is a phase with room ahead; the same RSI with volatility blown out indicates a move already mature.

And the moving-average cross labels the regime. An RSI of 32 means one thing with price above the 200 average and something very different below it.

Frequently asked questions