We report the traditional weekly crypto market analysis based on the contribution by Aayush Jindal (Cryptonews.com). The analysis was made on May 28.
After a close above the $9,200 level, bitcoin price gained bullish momentum. It rallied above 9,400 and 9,500. BTC is trading comfortably and it seems like there could be more gains above the $9,600 level.
On the upside: the next major resistance is near 9,780 and 9,800. Any further gains could push the price towards 9,950.
On the downside: there are many supports near 9,350 and 9,200. The next major support is near 9,050.
Ethereum price broke many hurdles near $215 and $220. ETH even tested the 225 resistance it seems like there are chances of more upsides in the near term.
On the upside: the next resistance is near 230.
On the downside: the previous supports near 215 may perhaps act as a strong support in the coming sessions.
Bitcoin cash price managed to gain pace above $230 and $235. However, BCH is still facing hurdles near 240, above which there are chances of a sustained upward move towards 250 and 255. On the downside, the main support is near 230.
Litecoin is gaining pace and it recently cleared the $43.5 resistance zone. It is now approaching 44.5 and 45.0, above which there are chances of a sustained upward move towards 48.0 and 50.0. On the downside, the previous hurdle near 43.5 may now act as a support.
XRP price bounced back above $0.195. However, it is still struggling to gain pace above the 0.200 and 0.202 resistance levels. If it continues to struggle, there could be a fresh decline. An initial support is near 0.195, but the key support is at 0.192.
In the past three sessions, a few small altcoins jumped more than +5.0%, including BNT, STX, ADA, NEXO, ETC, XTZ, NRG, ICX, LINK, OKB, and XMR. Out of these, BNT performed well and rallied more than +30.0% to clear the $0.700 resistance.
Cardano outperforms 98 cryptos, thanks to its new blockchain platform
Fredrik Vold (Cryptonews.com) reports of the impressive growth recorded by Cardano’s native token ADA, after the announcement that a new upgrade of its blockchain platform will be launched in June. ADA outperfored nearly all other top 100 cryptoassets by market capitalization last Friday. The asset has also seen a rise of +25.0% over the past 7 days.
“Cardano founder and CEO of Cardano development firm IOHK, Charles Hoskinson, revealed a number of dates related to the transition to the platform’s “Shelley era”, Vold wrote.
“According to Hoskinson, the public testnet for the Shelley upgrade will be available to everyone from June 9, and users will be able to run a stake pool with real ADA tokens. Further, the “Shelley test wallet” will be available from June 16, and – “if everything works without a hitch” – Shelley will ship on June 30, the CEO said.
“What happens is that you have four weeks to upgrade between June 30th and July 29th, and then on July 29th we’re gonna do a hard fork,” Hoskinson explained, adding that exchanges and similar services will be asked to upgrade their systems from June 23 to July 20.
Shelley is the second “era” in Cardano’s development and is said to be focused on decentralization, according to the project’s public roadmap. The new era follows the previous Byron era, which was largely focused on community-building.
Yesterday’s announcement comes after Hoskinson last month announced the release of a new mainnet wallet for Cardano dubbed Daedalus 1.0.0. The new wallet is unique in the way that it does not rely on any external parties to validate transactions, but instead downloads the entire blockchain, becoming a full-node desktop wallet to run on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers, Hoskinson said at the time”, Vold concluded.
Bitcoins on crypto exchanges hit 18-month low
Zack Voell (Coindesk.com) reports that the total number of bitcoins held in crypto exchanges wallets hit an 18-month low just above 2.3 million last Monday (source: Glassnode), marking a -11,0% year-to-date reduction in the number of bitcoins held by exchanges.
Meanwhile, over the same period, “the amount of ether increased by more than +7,0%. Some market participants see this as a sign that more bitcoin investors are increasingly taking direct possession of their cryptocurrency.
A portion of these active and often ideologically motivated bitcoin accumulators are called “holders of last resort,” a label implying they never intend to sell regardless of market movements. This type of investor partially contributes to the decline in exchange bitcoin balances by continuing to “accumulate for the long term and self-custody their bitcoins,” said Pierre Rochard, bitcoin strategist at Kraken, the largest U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange by liquidity according to Cryptowatch.
Rochard added that “improvements in fiat rails” also materially contribute to this trend by enabling arbitrage traders to “be more capital efficient and thus hold fewer bitcoin. On-chain data is not perfect and new exchange wallets may be missed,” added Rochard.
Others see bitcoins leaving exchanges for a reason completely unrelated to strong-willed, die-hard investors, however: the rise of prime brokers. Felman added that currently “there are few alternatives to holding bitcoins on an exchange if you want to trade, but new offerings in the prime brokerage space will lead to greater outflows from exchange-specific wallets.”
On Thursday, trading and lending firm Genesis acquired Vo1t as part of its strategy to become a full-service prime brokerage. Tagomi, a digital asset prime brokerage, was also recently acquired by Coinbase in the San Francisco-based exchange’s bid to expand its institutional trading service.
Regardless of the reason, a “consistent decline in the supply of bitcoin on exchanges implies a strong level of confidence from the holder base,” said Yan Liberman, co-founder of Delphi Digital. Roughly 60% of the issued bitcoin supply hasn’t moved in over 12 months, added Liberman, and that has been a precursor to previous bullish market cycles”, the article concludes.