Category: TRENDING

The week-long uptrend in the cryptocurrency market has begun to awaken bullish crypto investors and the successful March 15 launch of the Ethereum “merge” on the Kiln testnet has the community excited about the upcoming switch to proof-of-stake. 

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since the successful launch on Kiln, the price of Ether has climbed 25% from $2,500 to a daily high at $3,193 on March 25 as traders look to lock in their positions ahead of the merge.

Here’s a look at what analysts in the market are saying could happen with the price of Ether as the merge approaches and how the switch to POS could affect its price long term.

A clear breakout from the downtrend

The turnaround in Ether price over the past couple of weeks was succinctly addressed by crypto analyst and Justin Bennett, who posted the following chart highlighting the trend reversal that has occurred.

Bennett said,

“Ether first higher high since early Nov. 2021. Probably nothing.”

The merge will be a bullish development

A deeper analysis of the effects the upcoming merge for Ethereum will have on its price was discussed by analysts from the independent global macro and crypto research house MacroHive, who noted that the merge “will have bullish implications for Ether.”

According to MacroHive, “the prospect of being able to make a passive return on staked Ether will attract more investors into the space,” while the transition to proof-of-stake “will reduce Ethereum’s energy consumption by 99.95%.”

This will in turn help to attract more institutional money into the Ethereum ecosystem as the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) concerns “around the energy consumption of mining/proof-of-work are mitigated.”

The merge will also have a notable impact on the circulating supply of Ether as the net issuance will undergo a significant drop-off once completed as block rewards are replaced with Ether staking yields.

MacroHive said,

“This, coupled with the ongoing Ether burning should make Ether deflationary and this should be bullish overall.”

Related: Crypto rallies to $2T market cap as institutions signal readiness to enter

Merge could mirror Bitcoin halvenings

A final bit of insight into the effects of the upcoming merge was put forth by options trader and pseudonymous Twitter user McKenna, who posted the following tweet likening the effects of the merge to that of Bitcoin halvenings.

The merge is a crowded trade but so is the BTC halvening.

Only difference is ETH becomes a deflationary asset W/ EIP1559.

S-curve adoption as the foundational web3 protocol is going to send ETH to monumentous heights over the next decade.

You aren’t ready Anon.

— McKenna (¤, ¤) (@Crypto_McKenna) March 23, 2022

The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $1.997 trillion and Ether’s dominance rate is 18.7%.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Bitcoin (BTC) was up nearly 5% in 24 hours at the Wall Street open on March 25, but a new warning sign was giving traders cold feet.

Bitfinex whale flips to sell mode

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView confirmed BTC/USD hitting multi-week highs of $45,137 on March 25 as Wall Street got underway.

As $45,000 reappeared for the first time since the start of the month, however, so did all-too-familiar behavior among some of Bitcoin’s biggest investors.

Attention turned to exchange Bitfinex on the day, a platform famous for large-volume traders, or whales, guiding short-term price action with their trades.

As noted by popular trader Pentoshi, the entity that had purchased BTC at the last low near $34,000 had now put in a significant ask position beginning at $45,000.

The finex whale who made the bottom (same signature) just showed up with a lot of asks presumably to close out those 34k longs. Something to watch in the coming days $BTC pic.twitter.com/gDR8qvBVEl

— Pentoshi (@Pentosh1) March 25, 2022

Blockware lead insights analyst William Clemente agreed, telling Twitter users that it was now “popcorn time” for the market.

Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe, meanwhile, flagged “a dozen” possible lower price targets should BTC/USD sweep liquidity at previous rejection points from March, these also lying just above $45,000.

“I’m not saying I’m bearish at this stage, but while we’re making this build-up, I’m not really interested in longs at this point,” he said in his latest YouTube update.

Only a rechallenge of $50,000, he added, would form the impetus to consider long positions.

“No longs” on Ethereum, says trade

Van de Poppe added that altcoins were also on the radar and that it would be interesting to see how Ether (ETH), in particular, deals with upcoming resistance.

Related: What are the BTC price levels to watch as Bitcoin nears March peak?

The top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap showed clear copycat strength on daily timeframes, led by ETH/USD, which matched Bitcoin’s 5% gains.

Overall still watching how #Bitcoin is going to react at resistance, and especially how $ETH will handle it there.

Not a long area for me. pic.twitter.com/NalEyg6Jiu

— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) March 25, 2022

Cardano (ADA), while dropping several percentage points on the day, was still up 35% compared to the same time last week, making it the top ten’s best performer.

It’s not every day that a country’s leader endorses a cryptocurrency project. Nayib Bukele, the President of orange-pilled El Salvador, was the first leader to endorse Bitcoin (BTC). 

Now, the prime minister of Vanuatu, the Honourable Bob Loughman, has officially given the green light to Satoshi Island.

Satoshi Island is the megaproject crypto utopia in the South Pacific tha recently disclosed to Cointelegraph its vision, progress and preparation. Hot on the heels of news that they received 50,000 citizenship nonfungible token (NFT) applications, the prime minister of Vanuatu has given his blessing to “watching the development of Satoshi Island unfold.”

For the team at Satoshi Island, the endorsement is welcome news:

“With this full endorsement from the prime minister of Vanuatu in hand, we can show everyone that Satoshi Island is as real as it gets, and the kind words of the PM inviting our community to their home could not be a warmer welcome.”

The official letter states that “the overnment of Vanuatu welcomes the Satoshi Island project and its community to our country,” while highlighting that “Vanuatu is looking for new ways to attract investment and people to our country.”

The COVID-19 pandemic “severely affected the tourism sector,” a mainstay of the Vanuatu economy, contributing 34.7% to total GDP in 2019. According to World Bank data, visitor numbers to the paradise-like archipelago 2,000 km from Brisbane dropped from circa 300,000 to 80,000 in 2020.

The team at Satoshi Island had previously told Cointelegraph that the “lack [of] tourism” was one of the pain points they wished to alleviate with their project. Fundamentally, however, the “crypto industry finally has a physical home” in Satoshi Island.

Satoshi Island is a space for crypto enthusiasts to reside — not visit — living in sustainable build homes in a community organized by decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, where ownership is represented by NFTs.

Many of the past crypto megaprojects, from Akon City in Senegal to CryptoLand in Fiji, have failed. Satoshi Island’s successful team plans to “keep ideas on a need-to-know basis within the team until everything is in place to turn the idea into a reality.”

Related: ‘Satoshi Island’ crypto utopia receives 50K citizenship NFT applications

The team recommends that other planners “be very selective with the location and ensure it [is]logistically, environmentally and legally possible,” the continue suggesting to:

“Be very selective with the location and ensure […] most importantly, owning the land before you release your project is an essential step to showing your target market that what you are promoting is real and not just a pipe dream.”

With the prime minister of Vanuatu’s approval, the Satoshi Island crypto “pipe dream” is nearing reality.

Cardano (ADA) inched higher on March 25, putting itself on course recoup a great portion of losses that it had incurred in the first two months of this year.

Cardano: not so bullish yet?

ADA’s price jumped by around 7.5% in trading Friday, reaching $1.19 over a month after bottoming out at around $0.75. The Cardano token’s huge rebound move netted around 60% in gains. Nonetheless, it remained at the risk of losing its upside momentum in the coming weeks.

At the core of this bearish analogy is a multi-month descending channel pattern, with a reliable track record of causing and limiting ADA’s rebound attempts simultaneously since September 2021.

The channel’s upper trendline particularly has served as an ideal selloff zone, now being tested again as resistance, as shown in the chart below.

ADA’s daily relative strength index, now at 71.80, also alerts about its “overbought” nature. In a perfect scenario, an RSI reading above 70 leads to selloffs in an attempt to neutralize the underlying asset’s excessive valuation. That puts the Cardano token at an imminent pullback risk toward the descending channel’s lower trendline.

More signs of ADA’s potential pullback move come from its weekly charts. Notably, the Cardano token’s rebound has been having it test its 20-week (near $1.21) and 50-week (near $1.31) exponential moving averages (EMA) as resistances. They were instrumental in capping ADA’s gains in January 2022. 

Alex Benfield, analyst at Weiss Ratings, said ADA needs to reclaim $1.20 as support, a level that kept its bullish bias intact multiple times in 2021. He noted that if the Cardano token manages to do so, its likelihood of seeing a medium-term rally will be higher, adding:

“Until it clears that resistance, this move is in danger of losing momentum,” 

ADA “fundamentally bullish”

Alexander Mamasidikov, co-founder of crypto wallet service MinePlex, believes Cardano’s interim outlook is bullish despite its overbought risks.

Related: Charles Hoskinson cheekily admits: ‘I was wrong’ about DApp rollout

The executive believes that ADA’s ongoing growth momentum is more fundamental than technical, noting that the token started spiking after it became one of the assets included in the Grayscale Investment’s new altcoin fund, dubbed Smart Contract Platform ex Ethereum fund (GSCPxE).

BREAKING: Grayscale launches ‘Smart Contract Fund’ for $ETH Competitors

Fund’s Weighting:$ADA: 24.63%$SOL: 24.27%$AVAX: 16.96%$DOT: 16.16%$MATIC: 9.65%$ALGO: 4.27%$XLM: 4.06%

— Altcoin Daily (@AltcoinDailyio) March 22, 2022

“The growth is proof of how impressed investors are with respect to the revolutionary role of the Cardano blockchain in the fast-growing smart contract-powered evolution of Web3.0,” Mamasidikov asserted, albeit agreeing that levels near $1.50 could play spoilers to ADA’s upside move. Excerpts:

“Drawing from ADA’s growth trajectory, the $1 price level remains the crucial support level while the coin’s resistance is pegged at $1.5 in the short to medium term.”

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Play-to-earn (P2E) gaming was one of the hottest sectors in the cryptocurrency market in 2021 and based off the recent moves of Yuga Labs and Bored Ape Yacht Club, the gaming industry could continue to be a winner in 2022.

Axie Infinity was the first game to really capture widespread attention and highlight the possibilities of what P2E had to offer and is continuing to lead the way in 2022 as the protocol prepares for its next major launch.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the price of AXS increased 56.5% over the past ten days as an increase in its 24-hour trading volume has lifted AXS to a daily high of $69.82 on March 24.

VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for AXS on March 14, prior to the recent price rise.

The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historical and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.

As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for AXS climbed into the green on March 14 and hit a high of 78 around 24 hours before the price began to increase 52.32% over the next nine days.

Three reasons for the climbing price of AXS are the upcoming launch of Axie Infinity: Origin, the steady increase of active users and AXS stakers, and the rising popularity of the Ronin sidechain, which enables Axie Infinity gameplay.

Axie Infinity: Origin

The most significant development underway helping to boost the forward outlook for AXS is the upcoming launch of Axie Infinity: Origin, which is expected to take place in the coming weeks.

To clarify, we’re still aiming to get Origin out by end of the month.

It’s cutting close but our engineers are working non-stop to polish and fix bugs.

Shipping a very complex and quality product is hard. Engineers out there may empathize with this. We’re pushing!

— Philip La (@philipla) March 22, 2022

According to a recent report from Delphi Digital, Origin is a “completely reimagined version of the popular Axie Battles game that everyone is familiar with.”

Origin will include new game mechanics designed to improve the overall player experience, such as free starter Axies to help attract new players to the game, a reimagined storyline that adds depth to the player experience and the addition of active cards for eye and ear body parts.

The update will also introduce new in-game items like runes and charms, which will act as power-ups for Axies and require players to burn the platform’s native SLP token.

Active users and AXS stakers are on the rise

The rising price of AXS has also been given a boost by the steadily increasing Axie Infinity userbase, which is now at an all-time high of 207,209 total users, according to data from Dune Analytics.

While the pace of new users onboarding into the ecosystem has slowed along with activity in the wider cryptocurrency ecosystem, the increase is still significant and indicates ongoing adoption.

Non-gamers have also been incentivized to hold AXS with a current staking reward of 73% offered through the Axie Infinity platform.

As shown in the graphic above, nearly one-third of the circulating supply of AXS is currently staked on the protocol earning a total daily reward of 50,516 AXS.

Related: Blockchain gamers see playing NFT games as a potential full-time job, says new survey

Steady growth in the Ronin network

A third factor bringing added momentum to Axie Infinity is the growth taking place on the Ronin network, an Ethereum (ETH) sidechain that was built for Axie Infinity by Sky Mavis that is becoming the default NFT scaling solution for crypto gaming.

Axie Infinity is currently the only game running on Ronin but that hasn’t stopped the network from consistently ranking in the top 3 in terms of total value locked compared to other Ethereum bridges, with nearly $3.4 billion in value currently locked on Ronin. 

That will soon change, however, as Ronin will see the introduction of third-party developers, which includes “over 1,000 applications from teams wanting to build on Ronin,” according to Delphi Digital.

This has the potential to lead to an influx of new users to the Ronin ecosystem which could also benefit Axie Infinity as new users check out the top-performing project on the network.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Ether (ETH) bulls have a few good reasons to celebrate the 20% gain between March 14 and March 24. The price increase surprised many and led to the first daily close above $3,000 in 34 days. 

Even with this move, Marc’s $2.4 billion Ether options expiry is somewhat uncertain because bears can easily profit by pushing the price below $3,000.

In a letter to shareholders, Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, noted that the global socio-political crisis and growing inflation could make way for a global digital payment network.

Moreover, cryptocurrency investors turned bullish after Terra co-founder Do Kwon reconfirmed plans for the giant $10-billion BTC allocation. On March 24, the third tranche of Tether (USDT) left a wallet thought to hold funds earmarked to purchase Bitcoin.

On the macroeconomic side, there have been mixed feelings. For example, retail sales in Canada grew 3.2% over the last month, which is above the 2.4% market expectation. On the other hand, the United Kingdom’s Consumer Price Index came at 6.2% year-over-year while expectations stood at 5.9%.

Bulls expected a miracle, and it did not happen

Ether’s recent strength might have come as a surprise for many, but some bulls were definitely over-optimistic. Even though the call (buy) option instruments dominate the March 25 options expiry, overconfident bulls placed bets at $5,000 and higher.

A broader view using the call-to-put ratio shows a 178% advantage to Ether bulls as the $1.76 billion call (buy) instruments have a larger open interest versus the $630 million put (sell) options. However, the 2.78 call-to-put indicator is deceptive because most bullish bets will become worthless.

For example, if Ether’s price remains below $3,100 at 8:00 am UTC on March 25, only 10% of the call (buy) options will be available. That effect happens because there is no value in the right to buy Ether at $3,300 if it’s trading below that level.

Bears are better positioned despite having smaller numbers

Below are the three most likely scenarios based on the current price action. The number of options contracts available on March 25 for bulls (call) and bear (put) instruments varies depending on the expiry price. The imbalance favoring each side constitutes the theoretical profit:

• Between $2,800 and $3,000: 27,500 calls vs. 37,500 puts. The net result is $25 million favoring the put (bear) instruments.
• Between $3,000 and $3,200: 64,000 calls vs. 16,500 puts. The net result favors bulls by $140 million.
• Between $3,200 and $3,300: 88,000 calls vs. 15,500 puts. The net result favors the call (bull) instruments by $240 million.

This crude estimate considers the call options used in bullish bets and the put options exclusively in neutral-to-bearish trades. Even so, this oversimplification disregards more complex investment strategies.

For instance, a trader could have sold a call option, effectively gaining a positive exposure to Ether above a specific price. But unfortunately, there’s no easy way to estimate this effect.

Sub-$3,000 Ether would benefit bears

Ether bears need a small dump below $3,000 to avoid a $140 million loss on M. On the other hand, the bulls’ best case scenario requires a 4% price increase from the current $3,100 to score a $240 million profit.

Ether bears seem in a worse position, considering Larry Fink’s positive remarks and the positive Bitcoin momentum triggered by Terra’s (Luna’ potential $3 billion BTC acquisition. The most likely outcome is that bulls will continue to display strength by pushing the price to $3,200 or higher as the March 25 options expiry approaches.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Bitcoin (BTC) and the broader cryptocurrency market rallied on Thursday, as the total value of digital assets crossed $2 trillion for the first time in over three weeks amid signs of a clear shift in market sentiment — headlined by Goldman Sachs, no less. 

BTC printed an intraday high of $44,253, having gained more than 3% during the session, according to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has now recovered over 33% from its January low.

The total crypto market cap has gained over 7% since Monday to reach nearly $2.1 trillion, according to Coingecko data. The market capitalization figure also reached $2 trillion on CoinMarketCap.

While not bullish, Bitcoin’s Fear & Greed Index has escaped “extreme fear” and is now in the “fear” stage with a reading of 40. The volatility and sentiment indicator is based on a scale of 0 to 100 with higher readings corresponding to a more bullish outlook for BTC.

The crypto market’s apparent shift in sentiment follows months of downward price action for Bitcoin and altcoins, which led some investors to speculate about the possibility of a full-fledged bear market. Amid geopolitical unrest, however, members of the legacy finance community have identified crypto as a potential opportunity.

As Cointelegraph reported, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said the war in Ukraine could force nations to reevaluate their currency dependencies, potentially paving the way for digital assets. Specifically, the BlackRock CEO touted digital assets as a viable tool for international settlements and transactions.

Crypto has been on Fink’s radar since at least the fourth quarter of 2020.

Meanwhile, multinational investment bank Goldman Sachs appears to have put crypto on its radar and even redesigned its website’s homepage to reflect the growth of digital assets and the metaverse. Referring to these technologies as “megatrends,” Goldman populated a new “Insights” section of its website with previously released reports on gaming, the metaverse and Web3.

Goldman Sachs recently completed its first over-the-counter crypto options trade with Galaxy Digital. The investment bank first launched its Bitcoin futures product for CME in June 2021.

Related: US investment bank Cowen launches dedicated crypto division

Finally, Grayscale Investments recently announced the launch of a new smart contract fund that allows accredited investors to back Ethereum competitors. The new fund, which has already opened for daily subscriptions, provides exposure to Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), Polkadot (DOT), Polygon (MATIC), Algorand (ALGO) and Stellar (XLM).