MA (Moving average)

A moving average (MA) smooths a coin's price history into a single line by averaging closing prices over a fixed lookback window, filtering out short-term noise so traders can read the underlying trend more clearly.

The two most common variants are the simple moving average (SMA), which weights every price in the window equally, and the exponential moving average, which gives more weight to recent prices and reacts faster to sudden moves. Popular lookback periods include 20, 50, 100 and 200 candles: shorter periods track near-term momentum, while longer ones reveal the broader trend. On Bitcoin's daily chart, the 200-day MA is widely watched by traders as a rough dividing line between bull and bear conditions, and its 200-week version is often treated as a long-term value floor.

Traders frequently plot two MAs of different lengths on the same chart and watch for crossovers. When a shorter average crosses above a longer one, it is called a golden cross and is read as a bullish signal; the opposite, a death cross, is treated as bearish. Both are lagging by nature, since they only confirm a shift after price has already started moving, so they tend to generate false signals in sideways markets and work best alongside momentum tools like MACD or trading volume rather than as a standalone trigger.

Because crypto trades around the clock and can move sharply within hours, moving averages are usually treated as one input in broader technical analysis, not a guaranteed predictor of where price goes next.