After a first half of 2026 most holders would rather forget, bitcoin is doing something chartists have been waiting months for: bouncing off a line drawn eight years ago.
The chart comes from Dave the Wave, the pseudonymous technical analyst has become one of the more durable long-term frameworks in a field littered with discarded ones. Published Tuesday on TradingView, his monthly bitcoin chart shows the current candle trading around $64,443, up roughly 10% on the month, after dipping to a low near $57,750. That low landed almost exactly on the lower green band of his curve.
The Logarithmic Growth Curve, Source: X
The Logarithmic Growth Curve, which Dave has drawn unchanged since 2018, models bitcoin's price as a wide channel of explosive but diminishing growth: enormous early gains that taper as the asset matures toward eventual price discovery. The bottom band of that channel is what he calls the "buy zone," the level at which, in his framing, the pragmatic long-term investor puts money to work. The upper band has twice marked cycle peaks. The lower band has twice marked bottoms, in March 2020 and again in November 2022.
July 2026 is shaping up as the third such test. In a note to subscribers two weeks ago, Dave observed that price had returned to sit on, or very near, the curve, the same setup that preceded the previous two recoveries. The two measured boxes on the chart, each spanning twelve monthly bars, invite the comparison directly: the 2022 support test came on far heavier volume, 11.21 million, than the current retest at 4.28 million. That quieter approach fits his broader thesis that macro volatility should shrink as the market matures.
For believers in the model, the read is straightforward. The roughly 50% drawdown from October 2025's record near $126,000 is shallower than the 75% to 90% collapses that ended earlier cycles. The correction has carried price back to structural support. And a double-digit monthly candle suggests buyers are defending it. Extended forward, the curve points toward something like $140,000 to $200,000 by the end of the decade, and on Dave's longer arc, a $500,000 to $1 million bitcoin within about ten years, though with returns that compress cycle over cycle rather than repeating the early moonshots.
The model is not gospel, and Dave would be among the first to say so. Bitcoin closed a full week below its 200-week moving average in late June for the first time since 2023, the kind of long-term trend break that has historically shown up only in the deepest bear markets. A curve drawn by hand can be redrawn, and support only counts once it holds. Bitcoin was still changing hands in the low $60,000s on Tuesday, a chop that leaves the retest unresolved rather than confirmed.
Bitcoin is up 4% overnight, Source:
Even so, for a market that spent June staring at a 21-month low, the fact that the debate has shifted from how much lower to whether the floor holds is itself a change of tone. As we noted when earlier this month, the tape has found some footing. Dave's curve is where the bulls will argue that footing was always meant to be.
Put the pieces together and the chart makes a specific argument: that this bear market is closer to its end than its middle. Nearly every marker that has historically accompanied a bottom is present at once. Price has fallen back to the same buy zone that closed out the 2020 and 2022 declines. The retest is arriving on lighter volume, the signature of sellers running dry rather than fresh capitulation. The drawdown is shallower than in past cycles, consistent with a market that corrects less violently as it matures. And the first monthly candle to form on the band has closed up more than 10%, the kind of reversal that has marked turns before. None of that guarantees the low is in, and a decisive break back below the curve would negate the setup. But on the logic of the model, this looks far more like the closing stretch of a bear market than the opening of a deeper one. Is the Bitcoin bear market over? Not quite, but perhaps the end is sight.