Veteran trader Peter Brandt sparked a novel round of chart debate around Bitcoin after posting a chart and writing: “The banana is falling apart. This is the horn. Richard W. Schabacker wrote about it in his 1934 book.” For market participants accustomed to Brandt’s shorthand, the news indicated a possible change in the way he reads the recent structure of BTC’s recovery.
Brandt chart common shows that Bitcoin on the daily time frame has rebounded from its pointed February drop to the low $60,000s and climbed back towards the low $70,000s. The published candlestick data showed that BTC closed at $72,813.62 that day, with an intraday high of $73,210.95. Around this reflection, Brandt drew two expanding curved boundaries, creating the outline of what he called a “horn”.
“Banana/Horn” Could Send Bitcoin to Mid 80K dollars
What makes the post puzzling is that “banana” is not a standard textbook label in the sense that a flag, wedge, or triangle is. In context, Brandt appears to be using the word descriptively: the recovery arc looks rounded and elongated, and his comment that “the banana is bursting” suggests that the velvety curve is beginning to open outward, creating a wider, more unstable pattern. This is where the “horn” reference comes into play.
In the classic language of charts, a corner pattern is best understood as a widening structure in which the price path does not narrow but widens. Brandt’s reference to Richard W. Schabacker is significant because Schabacker’s pre-war work in technical analysis underlies today’s classic charts. Citing a 1934 text, Brandt presented this configuration as old-school graph geometry rather than a cryptographic meme or throwaway joke.
The problem is that Brandt himself did not present the pattern as established. When one user responded, “Dude, pick one. Horn or flag,” Brandt replied, “It could be both. I’m sorry you can’t handle flexibility.” This response is crucial. This suggests that he has not yet made a firm, categorical choice between a more conventional continuation flag or a widening horn-type formation. Instead, it seems to emphasize that the framework is in a transitional phase and that real-time pattern recognition is rarely as true as retrospective textbook examples.
Read this way, the tweet is less of a precise forecast than a warning about the nature of the market. A flag would usually indicate a more neat break in the trend. The horn, on the other hand, means wider swings and less controlled progression. On the Brandt chart, Bitcoin breaks through the upper half of the pattern, but the drawn boundaries expand outwards as the price moves to the right, visually supporting the idea that volatility may be increasing rather than contracting.
As for the price target, Brandt has not seen a measured move, so any forecast should be considered an approximation. The most reasonable reading of the image is not a fixed escape target, but a target on a path along the corner itself. The upper curved boundary increases from around the mid-$70,000 area in mid-March to around $83,000 to $88,000 in early April, while the lower boundary also shows a pointed escalate. If Bitcoin continues to follow the upper part of the pattern, the chart seems to point towards the low-mid $80,000 as the next evident zone.
At the time of publication, the BTC price was $73,186.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
