Crypto Trading Indicators: RSI, MACD and Bollinger Bands

Trading indicators turn past prices into readings of trend, momentum and volatility. This free tool draws SMA, EMA, Bollinger Bands, RSI, MACD and the Stochastic oscillator on live CoinGecko candles for Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana, and explains what each reading means and where it misleads. They describe the past; none of them predicts price.

Guide last reviewed:

1M uses CoinGecko 4-hour candles. Indicator periods count candles, not days.

Live chart and readings

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Educational tool, not financial advice. Indicator readings summarise past prices; they are not recommendations to buy or sell. Crypto is volatile and you can lose money.

What each indicator measures

Indicators fall into three families. Trend indicators (SMA, EMA) smooth price to show direction. Volatility indicators (Bollinger Bands) show how far price usually strays. Momentum oscillators (RSI, MACD, Stochastic) show how fast price has been moving. Using two from the same family mostly tells you the same thing twice.

Simple Moving Average (SMA)

What it is
The average closing price of the last N candles, redrawn each candle. It smooths out noise so the direction of the trend is easier to see.
Default settings
Common lengths are 20, 50 and 200. This page uses 50 candles. Note that a 50-candle SMA on 4-hour candles covers about 8 days, not 50 days.
How traders read it
Price above a rising SMA is usually described as an uptrend; below a falling SMA, a downtrend. When a short SMA crosses a long one, traders call it a "golden cross" (up) or "death cross" (down).
Limits
It lags by design: by the time the average turns, much of the move has already happened. In sideways markets price crosses back and forth and produces a stream of false signals.

Exponential Moving Average (EMA)

What it is
A moving average that gives more weight to recent closes, so it reacts faster than an SMA of the same length.
Default settings
This page uses 20 candles, seeded with the simple average of the first 20 closes. The 12 and 26 EMAs are also the building blocks of MACD.
How traders read it
Read it like an SMA. Because it turns sooner, short-term traders often prefer it for spotting momentum shifts.
Limits
Faster also means jumpier: an EMA gets whipsawed more often than an SMA of the same length. It is still a lagging indicator.

Bollinger Bands

What it is
A 20-candle SMA (the middle band) with bands 2 standard deviations above and below it. The bands widen when price is volatile and narrow when it is calm.
Default settings
20 candles, 2 standard deviations (the settings John Bollinger published). If prices were normally distributed about 95% of closes would sit inside the bands; crypto returns are not normal, so closes outside the bands are more common than that.
How traders read it
A close near the upper band means price is high relative to its recent range, not that it must fall. A "squeeze" (unusually narrow bands) often comes before a large move, but it does not tell you the direction.
Limits
In a strong trend price can "walk the band" for weeks. Treating every touch of the upper band as a sell signal fails badly in a bull run.

Relative Strength Index (RSI)

What it is
A 0-100 momentum oscillator comparing the size of recent up-moves with recent down-moves, using Wilder's smoothing.
Default settings
14 candles. The traditional thresholds are 70 (called "overbought") and 30 ("oversold"); 50 is the midline.
How traders read it
Readings above 70 mean gains have dominated recently; below 30, losses have. Some traders look for divergence: price makes a new high while RSI makes a lower high, suggesting momentum is fading.
Limits
In strong crypto trends RSI can stay above 70 or below 30 for a long time. "Overbought" describes the recent past; it is not a forecast.

MACD (Moving Average Convergence Divergence)

What it is
The MACD line is the 12-candle EMA minus the 26-candle EMA. The signal line is a 9-candle EMA of the MACD line, and the histogram is the gap between them.
Default settings
12, 26, 9 (Gerald Appel's defaults). It needs at least 34 candles before the first value appears.
How traders read it
MACD above zero means the short-term average is above the long-term one. A MACD line crossing above its signal line is called a bullish crossover; crossing below, bearish. A shrinking histogram means momentum is slowing.
Limits
It is built from two lagging averages, so crossovers arrive late and many reverse quickly in choppy markets. Its values are in price units, so they cannot be compared across assets.

Stochastic Oscillator

What it is
Shows where the latest close sits within the high-low range of the last 14 candles, on a 0-100 scale. %K is that position (smoothed over 3 candles); %D is a 3-candle average of %K.
Default settings
14, 3, 3 ("slow stochastic"). 80 and 20 are the usual upper and lower thresholds.
How traders read it
Above 80 the close is near the top of its recent range; below 20, near the bottom. %K crossing %D is used as a timing cue.
Limits
Very sensitive; it flips often and, like RSI, can stay pinned at an extreme during a trend.

Using indicators without fooling yourself

  • They lag. Every indicator here is calculated from closed prices, so it confirms a move after it starts.
  • Settings change the answer. The same RSI on 30-minute and 4-day candles can say opposite things. Decide your timeframe before you look.
  • Backtests flatter. Rules tuned on past data usually do worse live once fees, slippage and the 24/7 crypto market are included. Try your rule in the backtesting tool before trusting it.
  • Position size matters more than entry. A good-looking signal with too much money behind it can still ruin you. See the risk management guide.
  • Most long-term investors do not need them. If you are buying to hold for years, a plan like dollar-cost averaging matters far more than short-term momentum readings.

Frequently asked questions

What are trading indicators in crypto?
Trading indicators are formulas applied to past prices (and sometimes volume) to summarise trend, momentum or volatility. Common ones are moving averages (SMA, EMA), Bollinger Bands, RSI, MACD and the Stochastic oscillator. They describe what price has done; they do not predict what it will do.
What does an RSI above 70 mean for Bitcoin?
An RSI above 70 means recent gains have been much larger than recent losses over the last 14 candles, which traders label "overbought". It is not a sell signal on its own: in strong uptrends Bitcoin's RSI has stayed above 70 for extended stretches while price kept rising.
What is a MACD crossover?
A MACD crossover is when the MACD line (12-period EMA minus 26-period EMA) crosses its 9-period signal line. Crossing above is called bullish and crossing below bearish. Because both lines are built from lagging averages, crossovers confirm a move after it starts and often reverse in sideways markets.
Do technical indicators actually work for crypto?
Evidence is mixed. Indicators are useful for describing trend and volatility and for setting consistent rules, but no indicator reliably predicts price, and strategies that look good on past data often fail live because of fees, slippage and overfitting. Test any rule on historical data before relying on it, and size positions for the possibility that it fails.
Why do some indicators disappear on the 3M timeframe?
CoinGecko sets the candle size by date range: 30-minute candles for 1 day, 4-hour candles up to 30 days, and 4-day candles beyond that. A 3-month request returns only about 23 four-day candles, which is too few for a 50-candle SMA or for MACD (34 candles). The page hides those indicators and tells you instead of computing them from too little data.
Where does the price data on this page come from?
Candles come from the CoinGecko OHLC API and are fetched when you load the page or change the asset or timeframe. The indicators are calculated in your browser from those candles. The most recent candle may still be forming, so its values can change until it closes.

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