John Bollinger, the inventor of Bollinger Bands and a figure whose occasional crypto market calls carry outsized weight, says Ethereum and Solana are tracing potential “W” bottoms—while Bitcoin is not. In a post on X on October 18, Bollinger wrote: “Potential ‘W’ bottoms in Bollinger Band terms in ETHUSD and SOLUSD, but not in BTCUSD. Gonna be time to pay attention soon I think.”
The emphasis on “Bollinger Band terms” is doing heavy lifting here. In classic Bollinger taxonomy, a W bottom is a two-trough reversal with the second low holding above the first, often accompanied by a volatility signature that includes a prior band expansion, subsequent contraction, and a failure to register a lower low at the bands on the second leg.
The more robust versions see the second low forming inside the bands or with a positive divergence against the lower band, followed by a band “pinch” and a move through the middle band that transitions into an upper-band walk. Bollinger’s phrasing—“potential” and “time to pay attention”—signals that, in his framework, pattern recognition precedes confirmation, and that the validation trigger lies in subsequent price interaction with the middle and upper bands rather than in the raw shape of the price lows alone.
The market nuance in Bollinger’s latest readout is the explicit exclusion of Bitcoin. If ETHUSD and SOLUSD are printing W-like structures in Bollinger terms while BTCUSD is not, it implies a temporary decoupling in volatility structure and relative strength. In practical terms, a non-confirming Bitcoin can either lag into a later confirmation, remain range-bound in a mid-band churn, or fail its own setup if lower-band interactions persist without recapture of the middle band.
Failure would involve another lower-band excursion that undercuts the second trough or a volatility bloom that widens the bands without directional follow-through—both signatures of an incomplete base.
At press time, ETH traded at $4,037.
