BrokenCoins
Methodology

The rules, in full.

Everything on this site is computed by fixed rules from two public inputs: Coinbase's daily candles and public fundamentals from CoinGecko and DefiLlama. No forecasts, no discretion, no model that changes its mind. What follows is the whole method.

1. The universe

Every spot pair Coinbase Exchange trades against U.S. dollars and reports as online — 402 on 2026-09-07. Being listed on Coinbase is the credibility filter: a coin had to clear an exchange's review, and anyone with a U.S. account can buy it. Stablecoins, wrapped tokens and liquid-staking derivatives are analyzed but kept out of the opportunity and broken lists: their price action belongs to something else. Coins with fewer than 60 daily bars are listed as "could not look" rather than scored.

2. Bars

Daily candles are UTC days. Crypto trades every day, so a week is a seven-day ISO week (Monday to Sunday) and a month is a calendar month. Weekly and monthly bars are built from the daily bars, and the still-open week or month is marked forming — its bar is only what has printed so far.

3. Bar types (The Strat)

  • 1 — inside bar. Neither the prior bar's high nor its low was taken out. It confirms nothing.
  • 2-Up. Higher high only. 2-Down. Lower low only.
  • 3 — outside bar. Both taken out. A green 3 is bullish like a 2-Up; a red 3 is bearish like a 2-Down.

4. The swing-low rule

A swing low is confirmed only when a later bar takes out the high of the bar that made the low — a 2-Up or a 3 — before any bar undercuts that low. A higher low on its own is not confirmation. An inside bar is not confirmation. It does not matter whether the takeout comes on the very next bar or after a run of inside bars: the low is confirmed when the high goes, and until then it is potential, and the level to watch is that high.

The same rule, mirrored, confirms a swing high. This one rule is applied identically on the daily, weekly and monthly bars of every coin, and it is the hinge of everything below.

5. Nested cycles

A monthly cycle low is also a weekly low and a daily low: lower timeframes cascade into higher ones. Each timeframe reports its last confirmed low, how many bars have passed since, and how long that coin's cycles have typically run (the median spacing between its own confirmed lows). The typical length is an expectation, never a rule — price decides. A cycle-low confidence score (0–100%) blends the size of the decline into the low, in ATR and percent, with where the low falls against the coin's own timing band and whether a failed rally preceded it. Magnitude dominates.

6. Continuity

The last bar on each timeframe is either bullish (2-Up or green 3), bearish (2-Down or red 3) or neither. Three bullish bars is full bullish continuity; three bearish is full bearish continuity; two of one kind with none of the other is a lean; anything else is mixed.

7. The Broken list

Decline is measured from the rolling 365-day high to the last close. The high must be at least 20 days old. Tiers were calibrated on the live universe on 2026-08-30, where the median coin sat 80% below its high:

  • Red List — 85% or more below the high; or 65%+ within the last 120 days; or a crash of 9 daily-vol units or more.
  • Amber List — 70% or more; or a 7-sigma crash.
  • Watch — 50% or more; or a 5.5-sigma crash.

Sigma is the drop from the recent high (best of 5-, 10- and 20-day windows) divided by the standard deviation of the last 20 daily returns — it catches a fast crash before the depth rule can. Falling is flagged when two or more timeframes carry a bearish last bar or the high is under 45 days old. Recovering is flagged when a monthly swing low has confirmed — the Phoenix gate below, never a bar color.

8. Phoenix — stopped falling

The trough is the lowest low since the last confirmed monthly swing high. The peak is the highest monthly high in the 36 months before it. A coin qualifies when:

  • the decline from peak to trough is 50% or more, over at least three months (a one-month crash is broken, not washed out);
  • price is above the trough; and
  • the monthly swing low has confirmed by the rule (tier monthly), or at least the weekly bar that made the trough has (tier weekly).

The score (0–100): decline depth 10–30 (ramping from 50% to 90%); confirmation 25 for monthly, 10 for weekly; earliness up to 30, highest inside two weeks of the low and again when the first weekly pullback after the low confirms (a second pullback earns less, later ones little); false bottom +10; blue chip +5; a bottom older than four months with no fresh pullback −15.

A false bottom is a confirmed monthly low inside the prior 14 months that was later undercut — but only if the rally off it made at least two higher monthly highs first. That is the trap that washed people out, and the coin that survived it is the stronger candidate.

The entry is the first weekly pullback low after the trough, confirmed by the same rule; the trigger is that pullback bar's high. Never the trough itself, never the chase.

9. Fundamentals health

Crypto has no income statement, so the health score asks what actually decides whether a coin can hold a recovery. Seven components, each scored 0 to its maximum, from CoinGecko, DefiLlama and Coinbase listing history:

  • Liquidity (15) — 24-hour volume as a share of market cap. Can you get out.
  • Supply overhang (15) — fully diluted value over market cap. Who is waiting to sell into you.
  • Size (15) — market-cap rank.
  • Usage (20) — market cap over annualized fees. Fees people actually pay to use it.
  • TVL backing (15) — market cap over total value locked.
  • Fee momentum (10) — fees in the last 30 days against the 30 before.
  • Age (10) — years on Coinbase. Survived a cycle.

A component with no source data is reported as could not look and left out; the score is renormalized over what was measurable and shows its coverage. Stablecoins, wrapped tokens and staking derivatives are not scored. The opportunity score is Phoenix score × (0.6 + 0.4 × health/100); a coin whose fundamentals could not be measured is discounted to 0.8×.

10. The market read

The regime label is a transparent tally over Bitcoin's monthly and weekly structure, Ether's monthly bar, Bitcoin against its 200-day and 200-week averages, and breadth across the universe (share above the 200-day, share with bullish weekly bars). Every rule that fired and its points are listed under the label. Score 6+ is Advancing, 2–5 Early recovery, −1 to 1 Basing, below that Declining. Breadth fractions always name their denominator. The one-year index chart is an equal-weight, daily-rebalanced basket of every coin with a full year of Coinbase history, base 100, against Bitcoin and Ether.

11. What this is not

Not a forecast, not advice, not a model. Rules applied the same way to every coin every night, so that when a read is wrong you can see which rule was wrong. Bars are Coinbase Exchange UTC daily candles; fundamentals refresh nightly and carry their pull date. A coin's symbol is matched to its CoinGecko record by name, and where several coins share a symbol and none carries the name, the match is left blank rather than guessed.