A surge of validators awaiting Eth2 staking has pushed Ethereum’s node count to 11,259 — surpassing Bitcoin by more than 100.
Ethereum 2.0 genesis stakers have pushed the total number of Ethereum nodes past the number of Bitcoin nodes for the second time this year.
According to Ethernodes.org, 11,259 Ethereum nodes are currently active, giving it a roughly 1% lead over Bitcoin’s 11,136. Ethereum’s node count last surpassed Bitcoin’s in early September.
The number of Ethereum nodes has increased by more than 50% in the past two weeks or so, spiking from 8,086 on Nov. 15 — 11 days after the Eth2 deposit contract went live. Ethereum’s node count overtook Bitcoin’s on Nov. 30.
According to Blockchain Center’s “Flippening” index — which seeks to track the strength of Ethereum’s network relative to Bitcoin — the surge in node counts has seen the index gain from 50.5% to 62.4% over the course of November.
According to the index, node count is the third major on-chain metric on which Ethereum has currently “flipped” Bitcoin, alongside transaction count and transaction fees.
Etherscan estimates that Ethereum processed nearly 1.2 million transactions in the past 24 hours, compared to Bitcoin’s 300,000. Ethereum also processed $3.6 million worth of transaction fees in the last 24 hours, while Bitcoin fees were worth close to $1.4 million.
The Flippening Index estimates that Ethereum posted a two-year high of 67.68% for strength relative to Bitcoin in early September due to the third-quarter DeFi boom.
Eth2's beacon chain genesis kicks off in just a few hours from now. The launch of the deposit contract allowed ETH holders to designate their Ethereum for staking, with the 524,288 Ether required to initiate the launch of the beacon chain being surpassed just hours before its deadline on Nov. 24.
According to Beaconcha.in, 878,808 Ether have now been sent to the deposit contract. The beacon chain’s genesis will lay the groundwork for sharding and proof-of-stake.
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Amid ongoing legal action from U.S. authorities, the company behind Bitmex — 100x — has announced a new CEO.
100x — the holding group for Bitmex’s parent company — has announced the appointment of a permanent new CEO in the wake of charges filed in Octob against the exchange’s co-founders, including former CEO of both 100x and Bitmex, Arthur Hayes.
On Dec. 1, 100x announced that the former chief executive officer of German stock exchange Borse Stuttgart GmbH, Alexander Hoptner, will take over as CEO during January 2021. Hoptner will also join 100x’s board of directors, and will report directly to the group’s chairman, David Wong. 100x’s new CEO stated:
“I am proud to join 100x Group because I share the global ambition and audacity of its founders and employees to create an ecosystem of cryptocurrency technology that will improve lives. The future of this industry will increasingly belong to those who provide a regulated trading environment that is innovative, liquid, and fair for institutional and retail investors alike.”
Hoptner takes over from 100x’s current interim-CEO, Vivien Khoo — who was promoted from COO on Oct. 8 as an emergency replacement for Hayes.
The Oct.1 charges from the U.S. Department of Justice and Commodity Futures Trading Commission accuse BitMEX’s founders Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, Samuel Reed, and Gregory Dwyer of violating U.S. money laundering laws and offering illegal derivatives products to American customers. The accused all stood down from their executive responsibilities with 100x on Oct. 8
Samuel Reed was arrested on Oct. 1 before being released the following week after posting a $5 million bond. None of the remaining accused have been apprehended by U.S. authorities. Hayes is expected to remain in Hong Kong. The territory suspended its extradition treaty with the United States in August.
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Local media reports indicate electricity producers in Yunnan, China’s fourth-largest province by Bitcoin hash rate, have been ordered not to provide power to crypto mines.
Local sources report that authorities from the city of Baoshan in the Chinese province of Yunnan are escalating efforts to crack down on Bitcoin miners, ordering electricity producers to cease supplying power to the city’s miners.
On Nov. 30, Chinese crypto reporter Colin Wu tweeted that several miners had informed him of the ban, sharing what appear to be scanned copies of official documents issued to power producers:
Several miners told Wu that Baoshan, Yunnan, where China’s crypto mines are located, received a ban on November 30, requiring the power station to stop supplying power to the miners. Yunnan is the third largest mining place in China after Sichuan and Xinjiang. pic.twitter.com/1zAhcTLmXi
— Wu Blockchain（Chinese Crypto Reporter） (@WuBlockchain) November 30, 2020
However, Wu added that the ban was probably informed by localized “economic interests,” and probably is not indicative of a desire to quash crypto mining on the part of Beijing:
“There is no need to overestimate the impact of this incident. The attitude of China local power companies towards crypto mining is often changing. It is more a demand for economic interests than political pressure.”
The ban appears to have coincided with a 24-hour drop in global hash rate of roughly 10% from 140 exahashes per second to 125 EX/s, though correlation is far from causation.
According to Cambridge University’s Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, or BECI, Yunnan was China’s fourth-largest region by mining hash rate, behind Xinjian, Sichuan, and Inner Mongolia as of April 2020. Yunnan then represented 5.42% of global hash rate — ranking it above all countries except for China, the United States, Russia, and Kazakhstan.
In June, Wu reported that Yunnan’s government had ordered 64 unauthorized mining operations to shut down, including seven that were still under construction. The government cited tax evasion and security risks including how the mines were wired to local hydropower stations.
During that same month, a local Bitcoin mine caught on fire, resulting in the incineration of thousands of units.
The mid-year crackdown also followed a May 29 explosion at a hydropower station in Yunnan that killed six people and injured five. The explosion was believed to have prompted greater enforcement of safety standards concerning hydropower plants in the region.
In April, Yunnan’s state grid also issued a document warning electricity producers against the unauthorized diversion of power to Bitcoin mines.
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Considering that derivatives markets are now playing a much bigger role in Bitcoin price fluctuations, it is becoming increasingly necessary to review some of the key metrics professional traders use to gauge activity in the markets.
While reviewing futures and options contracts can be quite complicated, the average retail trader can still benefit from knowing how to properly interpret the futures premium, funding rate, options skew and put-call ratio.
Futures remium
The futures premium measures how expensive longer-term futures contracts are to the current spot at traditional markets. It can be thought of as a relative reflection of investor optimism, and fixed-calendar futures tend to trade at a slight premium to regular spot exchanges.
The 2-month futures should trade with a 0.8% to 2.3% premium in healthy markets, and any number above this range denotes extreme optimism. Meanwhile, the lack of a futures premium indicates bearishness.
BTC 2-month future contracts premium. Source: Digital Assets Data
The past week was a roller coaster and the indicator reached 2% on Nov. 24 while Bitcoin price peaked at $19,434.
Even though the premium currently sits at 1.1%, what is more significant is that despite a 14% price drop, the indicator held above 0.8%. Generally, investors view this level as bullish, and today we can see that Bitcoin price secured a new high above $19,900.
Perpetual futures funding rate
Perpetual contracts, also known as inverse swaps, have an embedded rate usually charged every eight hours. Funding rates ensure there are no exchange risk imbalances. Even though both buyers and sellers open interest is matched at all times, leverage can vary.
When buyers (longs) are the ones demanding more leverage, the funding rate goes positive. Therefore, those buyers will be the ones paying up the fees. This issue holds especially true under bull run periods, when usually there's more demand for longs.
Sustainable rates above 2% per week translate to extreme optimism. This level is acceptable during market rallies but problematic if BTC price is sideways or in a downtrend.
In situations like these, high leverage from buyers presents the potential of large liquidations during surprise price drops.
BTC perpetual futures funding rates. Source: Digital Assets Data
Take notice how, despite the recent bull run, the weekly funding rate has managed to remain below 2%. This data indicates that although traders feel optimistic, buyers were not overleveraged. Similarly, during the $1,400 price drop on Nov. 26, the indicator held a healthy neutral level.
Options skew
Unlike futures contracts, options are divided into two segments. Call (buy) options allow the buyer to acquire BTC at a fixed price on the expiry date. On the other hand, the seller of the instrument will be obliged to make the BTC sale.
The 25% delta skew compares side-by-side equivalent call (buy) and put (sell) options. If the protection for price upswings using call options is more costlier, the skew indicator shifts to the negative range. The opposite holds when investors are bearish, causing put options to trade at a premium, causing skew indicators to shift positively.
Oscillations between -15% (slightly bullish) to +15% (somewhat bearish) are typical and expected. It's very unusual for any market to remain flat or near zero most of the time.
Thus, traders should monitor more extreme situations as they may indicate that market makers are unwilling to take risks on either side.
The above chart shows that since Nov. 5, option traders are unwilling to take positions exposing themselves against an upside. Therefore, traders will deem this a very bullish situation.
Options put-call ratio
By measuring whether more activity is going through call (buy) options or put (sell) options, one can gauge the overall market sentiment. Generally speaking, call options are used for bullish strategies, whereas put options for bearish ones.
A 0.70 put-to-call ratio indicates that put options open interest lag the more bullish calls by 30% and is therefore bullish.
In contrast, a 1.20 indicator favors put options by 20%, which can be deemed bearish. One thing to note is that the indicator aggregates the entire BTC options market, including all calendar months.
BTC options put-to-call ratio. Source: Skew.com
In situations such as the one currently seen in the market, it’s only natural for investors to seek downside protection as BTC surpasses $19,000 even though the put/call ratio has been way below its 6-month average of 0.90. The current 0.64 level shows that there is a lack of pessimism from professional traders.
Overall these four key indicators have held steady, especially considering the market just suffered a somewhat traumatic pullback as BTC price dropped to retest $16,200.
With the price back above $19,500 again, nearly every investor wants to know if Bitcoin has enough strength to break its all-time high this week.
From a derivatives trading perspective, nothing is holding it back.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of theauthorand 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.
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AirBit Club's leadership have been gathered in New York City and will face charges for stealing "membership dues" to finance massive marketing events and lavish personal lifestyles.
Per a Monday announcement, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Southern District of New York have extradited a leader of alleged ponzi scheme AirBit Club from Panama.
Gutemberg Dos Santos is one of six operators of AirBit Club indicted, and the last to come into the U.S. to face trial before the SDNY. Dos Santos is a dual citizen of Brazil and the U.S. Authorities initially apprehended five of the six back in August, with a sixth avoiding authorities until October.
The DoJ alleges that AirBit Club sold "memberships" that promised guaranteed returns. The six operators marketed their returns as being the product of the club's mining operations and trading strategies. Per the DoJ, those operations didn't exist. Instead, membership dues went to funding further marketing all around the world, including massive events to recruit new members and jet-set lifestyles for themselves.
Some of these events are viewable on AirBit Club's still-active website, with the most recent taking place in São Paulo, Brazil, last year.
One of the six indicted was Scott Hughes, a California attorney who, the DoJ alleges, aided AirBit Club's leadership "by, among other things, helping to remove negative information about AirBit Club and Vizinova from the internet." Possibly by threatening libel suits to shut down dissent.
Hughes also stands accused of helping the operation to launder income via various client accounts.
One of the most famous ponzi schemes in crypto is PlusToken, which recently saw over $4 billion worth of crypto assets confiscated by the Chinese government.
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The concept of a DeFi ETF sounds promising, but it’s not without pitfalls.
Index investing in the stock market has become extremely popular thanks to the proliferation of exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, which often track popular market indices like the S&P 500 or the Nasdaq-100.
Investing in the entire market can be a simple but effective strategy. Instead of spending energy and time in trying to beat it — often unsuccessfully — investors are guaranteed average returns, which in the past 10 years have been more than respectable both in stocks and in crypto.
The rise of decentralized finance in the summer of 2020 seems to have reinvigorated the concept of passive investment in crypto. In addition to creating a new well-defined category of crypto assets, it has boosted the infrastructure required to create something analogous to a crypto-native ETF.
Several projects and platforms launched their own DeFi indices in 2020. Some, such as the FTX DeFi perpetual contract or Synthetix’s sDEFI, are derivative products based on synthetic contracts. They simply track the price of a basket of assets, without owning the underlying tokens.
But DeFi grants the possibility of creating something much closer to an ETF. These types of funds always own the underlying basket of assets that they are supposed to track. At the end of each trading day, some large institutions have the privilege of creating or redeeming shares of the ETF for its net asset value. They create new shares and sell them if the ETF is more expensive than the assets it holds, and they redeem existing shares if it’s worth less.
A DeFi-based index allows for the same exact type of arbitrage mechanism, but it doesn’t need to be limited to a privileged set of maintainers.
Currently, there are three major ETF-like DeFi products: the DeFi Pulse Index, two different indices by PieDAO, and Power Index by PowerPool.
The indices differ primarily by the assets they consist of and how each token is weighted. DeFi Pulse and PieDAO use market-capitalization weighting, while PowerPool has a fixed quota for each token. The PieDAO and PowerPool indices can be changed by governance voting with Dough and CVP, respectively.
While DeFi Pulse and PieDAO closely emulate the features of a traditional ETF, PowerPool’s index construction highlights that DeFi indices may eventually grow beyond the possibilities offered by stock markets.
The index allows holders to vote in governance proposals for the underlying protocols without exiting from the index. This is part of the team’s vision of smart indices that maintain the utility offered by direct ownership of the underlying tokens. While this is likely dictated by the project’s strong focus on meta-governance, it suggests that the possibilities offered by DeFi composability are yet to be fully explored.
The DeFi Pulse index is currently the most popular, with a market capitalization of $36 million. The combined value of PieDAO’s two indices is valued at $3.7 million, while the Power Index maxed out its current cap of $500,000 in value.
While still small, these indices were launched relatively recently and are likely to be in the early stages of their growth cycle. However, some experts see strong limits to their maximum size.
A crypto product for crypto enthusiasts
Meltem Demirors, the chief strategy officer of CoinShares, believes that using the term “ETF” for these redeemable index funds is not entirely correct. The concept of ETF is specific to traditional markets. She told Cointelegraph:
“An ETF is an investment product that combines the benefits of diversification with the ease of trading a single stock via a single ticker. Like many financial products, they rely on a manager, administrator, and a number of intermediaries, and have management costs, commission fees, restrictions on trading, and how easily you can buy or sell them, and differing grades of quality.”
While crypto indices capture many benefits of ETFs, they also “face the same challenges as buyers of traditional ETFs, without the benefit of regulatory oversight or standard documentation,” she added. “I’d call these types of products something very different in order to disambiguate what it is people are buying.”
The differences are crucial in determining crypto index adoption, in her view. “These products will initially attract crypto enthusiasts and proficient crypto users,” Demirors said, mentioning the difficulty of using DeFi interfaces for non-crypto users.
Demand for DeFi indices is likely to come from retail and crypto power users for now, while institutional investors will continue using the security and familiarity of their preferred brokerage accounts, Demirors concluded.
Joey Krug, a co-founder of Augur and co-chief investment officer at Pantera Capital, shared the overall outlook. Though he is more positive about tokenized indices as “what a crypto native ETF would look like,” he said that “retail [will lead] in the beginning, although long term, I could see demand from institutional traders as well.”
Diversification has been problematic
The attractiveness of market index ETFs comes from the broad exposure they provide to holders. While single stocks may rise and fall due to specific and unforeseeable factors, a basket of them can smoothen these individual aberrations to provide a general picture of the market.
In crypto, diversification has been largely ineffective so far. “Historically, most crypto assets have traded with a beta of one to Bitcoin,” Demirors explained. “Beta” is a financial measurement defining how closely an asset tracks another — a beta of one indicates price movements that are correlated both in direction and in magnitude.
This has been a major issue for previous crypto index projects, which often suffered from excessive market capitalization-based allocations to Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) that compounded the lack of diversification, Demirors noted.
Liquidity in the underlying assets is the limiting factor for any index fund, as when their holdings become too large, “the tail begins to wag the dog,” she said. Market participants may start to trade against rebalances and overall flows into the fund, potentially distorting the prices of the underlying assets.
These market limitations pose severe restrictions on the viability of index funds, with Demirors noting that “it would be difficult to see crypto indices growing beyond the natural limits of these markets.”
DeFi or governance-centric funds may nevertheless help with diversification issues. Krug highlighted that DeFi tokens have recently moved independently or against BTC, suggesting that “correlations are coming off a bit.” Over the long term, the presence of protocol revenue and cash flows may further help to break the correlation, he added.
Overall, thematic index funds like the DeFi baskets offered today are useful for certain niches of traders, both Demirors and Krug agreed. For example, they can be used to construct complex hedging strategies, Krug said.
But the prospects of mass adoption are somewhat cloudy, as these types of products will need to mature in lock-step with the wider crypto and DeFi markets to remain useful.
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Cybercriminals may favor a different cryptocurrency in the coming months, however.
Cryptocurrency-related fraud and theft are likely to grow in the post-COVID-19 world, according to a new report by cybersecurity and anti-virus provider, Kaspersky Lab.
Securelist, Kaspersky’s cyberthreat research arm, published a report on cyberthreats to financial organizations, forecasting some specific types of financial attacks that are likely to surge in 2021.
Securelist has predicted that a wave of poverty fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic will inevitably lead to “more people resorting to crime including cybercrime.” That could also mean a rise in crimes related to Bitcoin (BTC).
According to Kaspersky’s research arm, Bitcoin is likely to be the most attractive asset for cybercrime because it is the most popular digital asset. The report reads:
“We might see certain economies crashing and local currencies plummeting, which would make Bitcoin theft a lot more attractive. We should expect more fraud, targeting mostly BTC, due to this cryptocurrency being the most popular one.”
Securelist’s researchers also suggested that online perpetrators could switch to more privacy-focused digital assets like Monero (XMR). According to the company, this switch would happen due to increasing “technical capabilities of monitoring, deanonymization and seizing of BTC.” Securelist’s post reads:
“ [...] We should expect cybercriminals to switch to transit cryptocurrencies for charging victims. There is a reason to believe they might switch to other privacy-enhanced currencies, such as Monero, to use these first as a transition currency and then convert the funds to any other cryptocurrency of choice including BTC.”
As previously reported by Cointelegraph, crypto-related crimes slowed significantly in 2020, though some crypto sectors (like DeFi) have become new hotbeds for criminal activity. According to a report by VPN firm Atlas VPN, crypto and blockchain-related hacks are likely to continue declining in 2021.
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XRP price must break a key resistance level before $1.00 becomes a real possibility.
While Bitcoin (BTC) is facing a potential new all-time high, other coins are showing strength as well. One of those coins is XRP, which has been going vertical in the previous weeks.
XRP’s price surged from $0.22 to a high of $0.78 during the month of November, which immediately ended up in a massive correction towards $0.45.
Let's take a look at the XRP price charts to determine whether this was an entry opportunity before the next leg up.
The daily chart of XRP is showing clear support and resistance zones. Within such a heavy pump, the levels to watch can be derived from the daily timeframe.
In this case, the first massive support zone is around the $0.45 barrier. XRP corrected toward this zone as the price of Bitcoin dropped to $16,200 on Thanksgiving day.
The chart shows a clear support bounce as the price gained by more than 40% since.
If $0.45 failed to sustain support, the next support zone was around the $0.30 area, which is the previous resistance zone that was likely to be flipping support.
What are the new resistances if XRP rally continues?
The next resistance zone now to break is the $0.69 area, which is crucial before $1.00 can come into play.
There are a few useful tools to determine the potential resistance zones on the XRP chart. One of them is the Fibonacci extension tool.
The recent top is the "1" number on the Fibonacci extension tool and the bottom around $0.20 as the "0".
Therefore, the next likely resistance zone can be measured around the 1.618 Fibonacci level at $1.13. Similarly, the second zone is the zone around $1.70, which is the 2.618 Fibonacci level.
However, the first resistance zone between $1.08-1.18 is an important resistance zone, as it has also been acting as resistance throughout the 2017 cycle, as the chart shows. One can argue that a run toward $1.08-1.18 is likely once the area at $0.70 breaks.
Once a price breaks above resistance, the next thing one would like to see is the previous resistance becoming support, if you're a bull that is.
The BTC/XRP chart is showing such a critical level (highlighted in green) that can flip to support. During the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, this area served as the range low and support for a substantial period.
However, it failed to sustain that support, leading to a drop to 0.00001500 thereafter.
With the recent breakout to 0.00004000 sats, the bulls will want to see a support/resistance flip of the 0.00002400 sats area. If that holds, XRP is likely to continue running towards the $1.00 barrier.
The XRP/USD chart is showing an apparent breakout above $0.65. As long as that area sustains support and confirms the breakout, continuation towards $0.74 is on the table.
However, failing to break the $0.65 area means that a drop toward $0.55 will become the likely scenario.
The higher timeframes give a clearer indication of where XRP is located in the market cycle. A multi-year downtrend was broken to the upside, meaning that dips will likely be considered as entry opportunities for traders.
With this in mind, if XRP holds $0.45 as support, continuation toward $1.00 is likely, particularly if Bitcoin price hits a new all-time high.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of theauthorand 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.
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Nobody seems to be in a rush to digitize the euro, but that could change given increasing global competition.
Several experts from various European banks agreed that even a proof of concept for a digital euro is four or five years away.
In a panel on Monday called "Upgrading Money to the Digital Age: Introducing Digital Euro," participants agreed that the current task was primarily one of getting everyone onboard with the specifics of a digital euro, putting any real implementation well into the future.
Central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, have been an extremely popular topic of debate in recent years, but especially since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Austėja Šostakaitė of the European Central Bank said that the ECB wouldn't even be making a decision on whether to pursue a digital euro in earnest until the middle of 2021, which contradicts an estimate of January that the ECB's president made earlier this month. For now, Šostakaitė said, the question was “How do we introduce euro into the ecosystem and how does it collaborate with commercial bank money?”
Source: Austėja Šostakaitė's presentation for Upgrading Money to the Digital Age
An advisor to the Swedish Riksbank, Carl Andreas Claussen said that the central bank was finishing a proof-of-concept for its e-krona in February, but likewise estimated that a true launch was "four or five years away." Claussen said:
“There are some legal questions and this is such a big issue that we cannot decide on this. We need some political backing. We suggested to the parliament that they should have an expert committee looking at this.”
Sweden is part of the European Union but not the Eurozone, meaning that it retains its own currency. Internally, cash usage in Sweden is among the lowest in the world, meaning that the country has something of a jump on digitizing currency. Interesting to note is that Claussen also alluded to ambitions for cross-border applications, very few of which happen in the krona given the relative utility of the euro or dollar.
Regarding the euro itself, Šostakaitė suggested that outside competition may speed up the existing timeline for development. “If we see foreign CBDCs, or maybe Facebook coming into the Eurozone, that may accelerate things,” she said.
Facebook's Libra, for its part, seems on track to launch as a dollar-pegged stablecoin in January.
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Akropolis says calling it a merger “is a bit of a misnomer.”
Yearn Finance announced on Monday yet another merger with Akropolis, a multi-product DeFi protocol featuring yield optimization and under-collateralized loans.
Like the Cream Finance merger announced last week the two ecosystems will remain largely independent in terms of their tokens and overall product lines, a shared announcement clarifies. However, like with Pickle Finance, Akropolis will now integrate Yearn vault technology and will publish its yield farming strategies on its Vault V2 platform.
The two development teams will combine and benefit from each others’ expertise. Akropolis developers will be able to build their strategies using tools from the expanding Yearn ecosystem, including Cream’s lending platform.
For the Yearn protocol, Akropolis will offer its business development expertise and institutional contacts, the announcement says. Akropolis will also deprecate AkropolisOS and Sparta, its two other products unrelated to yield generation. These will be moved into open source development mode. Development will then be concentrated on an institutional front-end that would let professional traders access the combined Yearn-Akropolis ecosystem.
Akropolis will also introduce an IOU token to track losses from its recent hack. Platform profits will be redirected into this token’s fund to eventually repay all those who lost money on the hack. The team said it will streamline integration with insurance protocols to let more users benefit from coverage in the future. The Yearn ecosystem now also includes Cover protocol, a DeFi insurance provider.
Akropolis said that calling it a merger “is a bit of a misnomer,” despite using the same word to describe the cooperation in its announcement. Many of the integrations rely on the permissionless nature of DeFi, meaning that Akropolis could have unilaterally decided to integrate itself in the Yearn ecosystem at any previous point.
However, the cooperation between development teams is expected to be very tight and seems to be relying on very specific strengths of each team — Akropolis would seemingly make use of Yearn’s development experience in exchange for facilitating institutional onboarding.
Cointelegraph reached out to Andre Cronje and Akropolis, who both declined to comment.
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The weekend had already produced major upside for the pair, which late last week dived to $16,300. By the start of Monday, $18,600 had appeared, with Bitcoin going on to deliver returns of at least 17% versus those lows.
As Cointelegraph reported, a giant $1,300 CME futures gap threatens to take the market lower, but buyers so far remain unfazed. At press time, highs above $19,200 were in progress with around half an hour to go before the start of trading on Wall Street.
BTC/USD 1-day hourly chart. Source: TradingView
"Leveling up. The crucial area around $17,800 held," Cointelegraph Markets analyst Michaël van de Poppe summarized just prior to the $19,000 move.
"Now the crucial area is $18,200 and the final breaker before ATH is the resistance around $18,600-18,900."
Should Bitcoin manage to flip that zone to support, the door remains open for another attempt at challenging $20,000. Last week, however, $19,500 provided firm resistance.
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Ian Rogers, newly appointed as a chief experience officer at Ledger, says digital assets are moving from “science fiction” to the mainstream.
The revolving door between traditional finance and the crypto space is well established. Now, executives from the luxury goods sector appear to be following in their steps.
Ian Rogers, formerly the chief digital officer at LMVH, is taking on a new role as “chief experience officer” at Ledger, the well-known French crypto hardware and software maker. LMVH was formed in 1987 from the merger of high fashion house Louis Vuitton and Moët Hennessy, which itself formed from a merger of champagne maker Moët & Chandon and cognac producer Hennessey, back in 1971.
The newly-created role of chief experience officer involves taking charge of business-to-consumer operations and “reinventing the user experience” of Ledger's products.
In an official statement Rogers gave an insight into how he plans to approach this new role:
“I remember when you couldn’t simply say ‘go to my website' [...] You had to first explain the concept of the internet [...] I love those moments when technology moves from science fiction to mainstream. Digital assets are standing on the verge of this move."
Rogers further referred to the “inevitable transformation” from marginal, geek technology to mass product, and to the cryptocurrency "revolution" when speaking of Ledger and the nascent digital assets industry.
At LMVH, where he worked from 2015 onwards, Rogers's work involved overhauling the e-commerce strategy at luxury brands and implementing new technologies, such as big data and AI, to help with this goal. Prior to his time at LMVH, he worked at Apple Music, Yahoo Music and Beats music, having begun his career as a website developer for the American band The Beastie Boys.
Cryptocurrencies have often been described as a finance “counterculture,” both in academic papers and the mainstream press, due to their origins in libertarian and cypherpunk movements. Now that their appeal has broadened, and their relationship to mainstream finance has become ever more intertwined, Ledger's move to onboard luxury brand executives is, perhaps, not as surprising as it would have been in the industry's earlier, more offbeat days.
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The token is being claimed as the first blockchain-based financial instrument in Switzerland to hold an International Securities Identification Number.
Gold outflows are rising as Bitcoin rallies due to heightened buyer demand from institutional investors.
The ongoing Bitcoin (BTC) rally has primarily been driven by institutions, analysts say, with metrics such as CME’s open interest and Grayscale’s assets under management (AUM), supporting this narrative.
At the same time, the gold market has seen large outflows in recent weeks. On Nov. 24, independent financial researcher Jan Nieuwenhuijs reported that gold saw its largest weekly outflow in history.
The timing of the heightened level of outflows from the gold market is noteworthy because it comes after the entrance of major institutional investors into the Bitcoin market.
Cointelegraph reported that Guggenheim Partners, which manages $275 billion in assets, is the latest institution to show interest in Bitcoin.
What does this mean for Bitcoin?
In the medium to long term, the inflow of institutional capital into Bitcoin could lead to two key trends.
First, Bitcoin could see a more sustained uptrend that has emerged since September. Institutions, especially those gaining exposure to BTC through the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, are likely accumulating BTC with a long-term strategy.
Some long-time Bitcoin investors, who had gold positions for prolonged periods, have also started to allocate their capital fully into BTC. Raoul Pal, the CEO of Real Vision Group, said:
“Ok, last bomb - I have a sell order in tomorrow to sell all my gold and to scale in to buy BTC and ETH (80/20). I dont own anything else (except some bond calls and some $'s). 98% of my liquid net worth. See, you can't categorize me except #irresponsiblylong Good night all.”
Second, fund managers say that this could make Bitcoin even more dominant in the cryptocurrency market. Currently, the market cap of Bitcoin accounts for 63.83% of the global cryptocurrency market’s valuation.
Bitcoin dominance index. Source: Coinmarketcap
Kyle Davies, the co-founder at Three Arrows Capital, one of the largest funds in the cryptocurrency sector, said:
“No one goes gold -> $BTC -> alts This year has seen big high net worth inflows from USD or gold to BTC. This is not retail. These guys aren't going into ripples.”
The near-term trend of BTC remains uncertain
Bitcoin has seen strong momentum throughout the past three months, barely seeing major corrections.
During previous bull cycles, it's not uncommon for BTC to see 30% pullbacks, and the recent run is yet to post a major downturn. But, in the near term, on-chain analysts say that BTC could be braced for a deeper drop.
Bitcoin All Exchanges Outflow Mean. Source: CryptoQuant
Ki Young Ju, the CEO of CryptoQuant, said that whales are keeping more BTC on exchanges than in the past few months. This could indicate that whales could sell more BTC in the foreseeable future. He said:
“The fact that whales don't withdraw means that $BTC is available for selling. If whales think the price will go up, they'll withdraw $BTC a lot. I don't know when it'll start, but if the price drops, whales will react to the price and make high volatility.”
Whether the buyer demand from institutions and their Time-weighted Average Price (TWAP) algorithms would counter the selling pressure from whales would likely dictate the short-term price cycle of BTC.
from Cointelegraph.com News https://ift.tt/3qgKnWu
After plumbing depths of $16,300 last week and failing to get much higher than $17,000 in the days following, Bitcoin surprised on Saturday, beginning a climb that has reached $18,600 on Nov. 30.
The timing led to comparisons to Black Friday, as BTC/USD fell in time for the infamous discount day and rose back up afterward.
“Guess the Black Friday bitcoin sale is officially over. Hope you stocked up,” Barry Silbert, CEO of asset management giant Grayscale summarized.
At press-time levels of $18,550, Bitcoin is now up almost 14% versus the lows, recouping the majority of its losses from when it fell from $19,500. This will be a familiar sight for traders, who will now be eyeing the potential for Bitcoin to avoid the psychological selling pressure which so clearly set in near the all-time highs of $20,000.
“Crucial level to hold is the $17,700-17,850 breaker. If that is lost, I think we'll see the 16's again,” Cointelegraph Markets analyst Michaël van de Poppe said in his latest analysis on Sunday.
Van de Poppe likewise highlighted the area around $18,500 and $18,700 as the crucial breakout point to fuel further bullishness. Bitcoin subsequently hit the midpoint of that range, but has so far failed to turn it into a launchpad for reclaiming any higher levels.
Nonetheless, should current levels hold, Bitcoin will easily see its highest ever monthly close at the end of Monday.
One major argument for Bitcoin reversing downwards for its next move comes in the form of a classic “gap” setup on futures markets.
Thanks to the weekend’s volatility, Monday has begun with a noticeable “gap” on the charts at CME Bitcoin Futures, this one lying $1,500 lower than the current spot price.
Gaps refer to the empty space left between the end of Friday trading and the start of Monday trading for futures, and the latest one to open is $1,300 in size — one of the largest ever.
Historically, Bitcoin has opted to rise or fall to “fill” such gaps once they appear, and this has tended to occur quickly, meaning that the chance is there for a fresh dip to as low as $16,990 — the beginning of the gap.
A further albeit much smaller gap remains “unfilled” from previous trading at around $19,000.
CME Group Bitcoin futures chart showing gaps. Source: TradingView
“It all depends on how harshly we reject in this range and how we are going to react around the support at $17,000, which is also the weekly close on the CME futures,” Van de Poppe commented.
He also noted that one weekend’s upside is no good as a starting point for being bullish. Entering Bitcoin is a wise move only when support is reached on higher timeframe support levels, meaning that the CME gap should be resolved by the time that the real state of the market becomes more obvious.
An accompanying survey meanwhile showed a fairly even split between 6,000 respondents regarding whether BTC/USD would hit $14,000 or $22,000 first.
Stocks drop after record month
Outside Bitcoin, the macro picture is mixed as the month ends. November saw 13% for equities worldwide, a record month as expectations of a Coronavirus vaccine ran high.
On Monday, however, progress began to retreat, with China leading a turnaround from gains to losses and European futures following suit.
The U.S. dollar, already under pressure, is expected to dip to its lowest levels since April 2018, Bloomberg reported on the day. As noted by Cointelegraph, the U.S. dollar currency index (DXY) has been steadily falling over the past weeks, erasing some previous gains.
Bitcoin typically reacts favorably to DXY weakness, and while its relationship to macro assets more broadly is waning, abrupt movements in the index remain apt to dictate short-term market direction.
At press time, DXY stood at 91.72, having broken the 92 support level, which was preserved even in August when Bitcoin hit $12,000 for the first time this year.
U.S. dollar currency index 1-week hourly chart. Source: TradingView
Virus-induced headaches meanwhile continue across the Western world. The United Kingdom’s economy, according to estimates from Bloomberg shared by market commentator Holger Zschaepitz, will contract by the most in over 300 years.
Market-specific issues, such as Tesla debuting on the S&P 500, are also on the radar.
"Extreme greed" characterizes macro
“Extreme greed” is what is characterizing investor sentiment in both cryptocurrency and traditional markets, according to classic indicator the Fear & Greed Index.
A popular sentiment gauge for crypto in paritcualr, the Index uses a basket of factors to assess how overbought or oversold the market is based on investor behavior. A normalized score out of 100, the higher the reading, the more likely the market is due for a correction.
Cointelegraph has frequently reported on the Crypto Fear & Greed Index in recent times as it heads towards all-time highs of 95/100. A recent peak of 94 came just prior to BTC/USD shedding $3,000 in a day.
On Monday, the Index stood at 88 — lower than before but still firmly in the “extreme greed” category.
Crypto Fear & Greed Index one-year chart. Source: Alternative.me
For Zschaepitz, however, the identical “extreme greed” rating for traditional markets is being distorted thanks to the interventions by central banks as part of Coronavirus measures.
“Just to put things into perspective: CNN‘s Fear & Greed Index has risen to 92 as investors have become extreme greedy,” he wrote on Sunday.
“But maybe that greed is mainly driven by CenBank liquidity so this is no longer an reliable indicator for an imminent correction!”
Traditional markets Fear & Greed Index. Source: CNN
Central banks have bought up a huge range of bad assets in order to give the illusion of competition on the market since March this year, a move which has garnered considerable criticism from Bitcoin circles.
Leave it to the pro buyers?
As quant analyst PlanB acknowledged in a timely reminder on Sunday, a new week means a new round of Bitcoin buying by a group of familiar faces: Grayscale, Square and PayPal.
As last week, the corporate giants will need to satisfy client demand by buying up the diminishing number of coins available at current prices.
This new status quo, formed when PayPal released its cryptocurrency features, has led to estimates showing that there is simply not enough Bitcoin to go around. The three companies’ needs are more than miners can produce, and still compete with demand from elsewhere.
The only logical outcome, should demand increase or stay the same, is for the price of Bitcoin in other assets to rise — a simple equation of supply and demand.
In an interview with CNBC last week, Dan Schulman, PayPal’s CEO, said that the company was betting on Bitcoin becoming more widely used as a currency.
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After a week of gloomy headlines and a brutal price dip, traders would do well to think long term.
In the midst of the crippling price dips earlier this week, cryptocurrency traders seemed beset on all sides by fear, uncertainty, and doubt. However, Dermot McGrath, head of research at blockchain investment firm Sino Global Capital, said the firm prefers taking a long term view.
Additionally, whether the tokens have been sold or not, in an interview with Cointelegraph McGrath recommended that traders learn to look beyond immediate headlines.
“In the crypto and blockchain ecosystems it is important to be able to ‘cut through the noise,’” he said. "We are long term bullish on Bitcoin and we continue to see the industry professionalize and mature as an asset class."
McGrath also weighed in on a common boogeyman for Western crypto traders — Chinese cryptocurrency miners. Many have speculated that Chinese miners could conduct a 51% attack on the network, and they’ve long been derided by some for controlling vast swaths of the BTC supply:
the cool thing about china having a ton of bitcoins and mining a ton of bitcoins is absolutely nothing
“Some of the reason that “Chinese miners” have been a “boogeyman” to western traders is simply a lack of understanding,” he said. “In theory, of course we know that 51% attacks can occur, but the level of centralization/coordination and incentives simply does not exist among the Chinese miner community for top cryptos.”
“As far as dumping of mined coins, etc. It is possible that Chinese miners are impacted by external factors that would cause them to manage mined coins differently. This is to be expected across different geographies,” he added.
When asked about price targets, McGrath declined to make moonshot calls. He did, however, shed some light on Sino’s investment philosophy.
“Pick projects and teams in which you share a vision and have conviction. Invest for the long-term and don’t get caught up in day to day market fluctuations,” he said. “We invest in teams and projects where we share a vision and have conviction. If we can find, support, and incubate these projects – we’ve done our job.”
Mining difficulty on the network rose by 8.9% today while the hash rate is more than 130 EH/s.
The price of Bitcoin has reached a two-year high of more than $19,000 and fallen below $17,000 more than once in the span of a week as mining difficulty continues to rise.
According to on-chain analytics provider Glassnode, Bitcoin (BTC) mining difficulty increased by 8.9% today, putting the metric within 5% of its all-time high value set last month.
#Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 8.9% today.
A rise in mining difficulty marked the start of bull cycles in 2013 and 2016, though it remains to be seen whether the coin’s recent rally to within 3% of its ATH price is long-term bullish. The price of Bitcoin fell by 11% last week as many whales moved some of their holdings to exchanges and is $18,122 at the time of publication.
Greater mining difficulty can mean an increase fees for users and the time required to generate a block in addition to increasing the number of unmined transactions in Bitcoin’s mempool. According to estimates from Earn.com, the optimal BTC transaction fee is currently 14,272 satoshis, or roughly $2.60.
The Ethereum (ETH) blockchain has also seen record highs recently. Glassnode reported mining difficulty for the network was at a two-year high on Friday following the price of the token falling from more than $600 on Nov. 23 to $513 in three days.
The network hash rate — an indication as to how much computing power is being dedicated to validating Bitcoin transactions — plunged following the metric and mining difficulty reaching an ATH in October. Data from Blockchain.com shows the metric fell more than 27% between Oct. 17 and Nov. 2, from 146.5 EH/s to 106.6 EH/s. Bitcoin’s hashrate is currently 130.15 EH/s, according to BTC.com.
At the time of publication, the price of Bitcoin is staying above $18,000, having risen 1.9% in the last 24 hours.
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Mia the djungarian 'gamble hamster' will power high-stakes marble races with her trusty hamster wheel.
After just over two years of development, on Sunday a new form of gambling will be released to the Ethereum world on mainnet: hamster-powered marble races.
Powered by Mia, a female djungarian or “winter white dwarf” hamster and her trusty hamster wheel, the project, dubbed “Mia & the Marbles,” is an automated marble-racing and gambling platform from a group of independent developers.
While the concept behind the project may seem… whimsical, in an interview with Cointelegraph the development team for ‘M&M’ revealed how carefully the racing platform has been thought out.
“We guarantee races that are provably fair, provably live and easily-verifiable,” the devs said. “We can guarantee that the races are taking place in real-time and are not pre-recorded. We do this with our provably live video stream that shows the first 8 bits of the current Ethereum blockhash physically on the race track with 8 movable pegs. A high peg stands for a 1, a low peg for a 0.”
The team says that there is also a refund function in place for races that don’t deliver a valid outcome after two days.
While Mia & the Marbles may strike some as a thought experiment or hackathon moonshot come to life, the developers say M&M is inspired by a passion for provably fair gambling.
“We always loved the idea of blockchain gambling projects. But unfortunately, scams are not uncommon in the low-regulated crypto space,” the team said. “So we were brainstorming ideas with the goal to make the provable fairness component easy to understand for anyone, while also being fun at the same time!”
As a coworker, the developers report that Mia is stellar. There was a rough patch in the beginning — when she was a pup, Mia enjoyed nibbling on devs’ fingers — but these days she’s always ready to produce. While many protocols governed by DAOs need to worry about incentive structures and the possibility that another protocol might poach their talent via merger, Mia happily runs in her wheel up to 8 kilometers per day.
“Hamsters are very active naturally and cover wide distances at night to gather food,” the dev team explained.
In the future, there will be more well-developed tracks and possible “championship” brackets for the marbles, and the developers ultimately intend to keep building towards fun, fair games on Ethereum.
“We strongly believe that adding real-world randomness into crypto gambling solutions can dramatically increase the trust that players have into these products. We want to contribute to a fair world.“
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The Uniswap rival manages to fend off an attack in a matter of hours.
As exploits and hacks run rampant across the DeFi ecosystem, at least one project appears to have fended off the worst of an attack — the once-maligned “vampire” AMM (automated market maker) exchange Sushiswap.
Observers noticed last night that Sushiswap — which got its start leeching liquidity from rival AMM Uniswap — was experiencing an exploit, and that anonymous head developer 0xMaki was taking steps to mitigate it:
Possible @SushiSwap exploit found? @0xMaki sends exploiter a tx with a message to collect bug bounty.
Reports from the Sushiswap Discord channel now indicate that the exploit has been resolved, and that all lost user funds (between $10,000 and $15,000) will be covered by the Sushiswap treasury.
To gain a better understanding of the exploit and what it means for Sushiswap, Cointelegraph spoke to one of the smart contract engineers that 0xMaki personally thanked on Twitter for helping to mitigate its effects: self-described “DeFi degen” and solidity developer ‘andy.’
Post-Mortem when I wake up, exploiter got around 10-15k so far from the 0.05% fees cut of Sushiswap.
LP - xSushi holders are safe!
It is a fascinating one thanks @andy8052@danielque & sushi core devs for the quick reaction and help.
According to andy, 0xMaki contacted him at 10pm EDT.
“He (0xMaki) said there was some weirdness going on but was unsure what it was. We spent about 1 hour in a discord call going through transactions until we figured out what the exploit was.”
Andy explained that the attacker wrapped liquidity pool tokens and deployed them to a new pool, allowing the attacker to execute “really weird logic to pull the underlying tokens from the reward contract.”
The affected contracts were patched within hours, and according to 0xMaki the auditing firm Peckshield will be reviewing the changes
Adding a layer of intrigue to the exploit is that 0xMaki and the Sushiswap team attempted to communicate with the exploiter as they searched to find a solution, sending a short message to the exploiters address:
“I see you, we are working on fixing it. Contact me on Discord for a bug bounty - 0xMaki,” the message read.
With the passage of time, however, the market is once again showing signs of faith in Sushiswap. The price of the exchange’s SUSHI governance token is up over 100% on the month.
For his part, andy’s faith never wavered and the response to the attack is just another sign of the competency from the new Sushi team.
“They have been heads down working super hard. Just look at all the cool stuff they have released and are working on. It definitely doesn't hurt my view of them but also didn't really change much for me personally as I already thought pretty highly of the team.”
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Fast food chains like Burger King and Church's Chicken already accept crypto payments in the South American nation.
A famous U.S.-based pizza chain has begun accepting cryptocurrency payments in all its stores in Venezuela.
According to a Nov. 27 tweet from crypto services firm CryptoBuyer, Pizza Hut stores in the South American nation now accept crypto as a form of payment for food and drinks. The move follows the crypto firm partnering with Mega Soft to drive adoption in Venezuela by facilitating crypto payments at more than 20,000 shops and businesses.
“Pizza Hut nowadays cannot be detached from these technological advances and all those incorporating new approaches for daily necessities," said Richard ElKhouri, General Director for Venezuelan operations of the pizza chain, in an interview with local news outlet ElAxioma. “It is important that we accommodate young people, modern adults, and people technologically knowledgeable.”
Using CryptoBuyer, customers can purchase pizza at the restaurant chain with Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Dash (DASH), Binance Coin (BNB), Binance USD (BUSD), Ether (ETH), Tether (USDT), Dai (DAI), and its native token XPT. Pizza Hut has locations in the capital, Caracas, as well in the cities of Maracay, Maracaibo and Barquisimeto.
Based in Panama, Cryptobuyer is a cryptocurrency merchant gateway startup that also runs Bitcoin ATMs across Central and South America. The firm has already opened popular companies for crypto payments, including U.S.-based fast food chains like Burger King, the Tamanaco Intercontinental Hotel in Caracas, and Traki, the largest chain of retail stores in the country.
Bitcoin's beginnings go hand-in-hand with the American staple dish, as the first documented commercial purchase using the cryptocurrency was an order for two pizzas. On May 22, 2010, programmer Laszlo Hanyecz completed the first documented commercial Bitcoin purchase, paying 10,000 BTC — now worth roughly $181 million — for a Bitcoin Talk forum user to send him two pies from a Papa John's store in the United States.
from Cointelegraph.com News https://ift.tt/33tq3Hw
“I think that the days when folks believed that there’s only going to be Bitcoin, I think, are over,” said Asheesh Birla.
In a podcast for Lend Academy recorded Nov. 5, Asheesh Birla called Bitcoin (BTC) a “pretty innovative alternative to gold,” but added that 2020 had shown there was room for a lot of tokens in the crypto space.
“I think that the days when folks believed that there’s only going to be Bitcoin, I think, are over. I think it’s clear that there’s gonna be a lot of digital assets and there’s gonna be a lot more traditional assets that are gonna be tokenized as digital assets.”
The RippleNet GM made the comments when the price of XRP was roughly $0.25. It has since tripled, surging to $0.92 last week before crashing 30% amid a wider market rout.
Despite the lack of movement in XRP at the time, Birla added he was feeling bullish over the crypto space coming back “red hot again” after the 2018 crash.
“I don’t see the traditional venture capitalists as interested as they were in 2017,” he said. “But in my mind I couldn’t be happier in terms of innovation in the space.”
Both Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen and CEO Brad Garlinghouse have recently expressed frustration at the lack of regulatory clarity for Ripple in the United States. Last month, SBI Holdings CEO and Ripple board member Yoshitaka Kitao said that the blockchain-based payments may be considering relocating its headquarters to Japan. Larsen believes authorities in the U.S. have a “regulation through enforcement” policy and are “woefully behind” in preparing for the cryptocurrency-based next generation of a global financial system.
At the time of publication, the price of XRP is $0.61, having dropped 3% in the last 24 hours.
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Bitcoin and a few altcoins have seen aggressive buying at lower levels, which could result in a retest of their recent highs.
As Bitcoin price rallied to a new 2020 high, the open interest on CME Bitcoin (BTC) futures rose to $1.16 billion, making it the world’s largest Bitcoin futures market, according to Arcane Research. This suggests that institutional investors are relatively unmoved by the recent sharp correction in Bitcoin price.
Guggenheim Partners has become the latest and the largest Wall Street institution that plans to invest in Bitcoin.
Guggenheim has sought the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) nod to invest up to 10% of its Macro Opportunities Fund’s net asset value in Bitcoin through the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. The fund currently has $5.3 billion in assets, hence, Guggenheim may buy $500 million or more worth of Bitcoin.
The increase in institutional investor’s appetite comes even as Bitcoin is close to its all-time high and this shows they are confident in the long term story of the digital asset.
Global Macro Investor and Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal said in an interview with Cointelegraph that Bitcoin’s most conservative target is a rally to $150,000 by November 2021. If a large amount of institutional money continues to flow into the crypto space, Bitcoin could even rise to $250,000, added Pal.
The long-term fundamentals of cryptocurrencies continue to improve but the price could still fall in the short term and it's likely that investors will view each dip as a buying opportunity.
Let’s analyze the charts of the top-five cryptocurrencies to find out what opportunities exist.
BTC/USD
In a strong uptrend, the bulls generally buy the dip to the 20-day exponential moving average. The long tails on the Nov. 26 and 27 candlesticks show that bulls aggressively purchased Bitcoin (BTC) at lower levels.
The upsloping moving averages and the relative strength index (RSI) in the positive zone suggest that bulls are in control.
However, the bears will try to stall the current up-move at $18,210.77, which is the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level of the most recent fall. If the price turns down from this resistance, a few days of range-bound action is possible.
Conversely, if the bulls can push the price above $18,210.77, the BTC/USD pair could rally to $19,459.22 and then to the magical number of $20,000. A breakout of this resistance could start the next leg of the uptrend.
This bullish view will be invalidated if the price turns down from the current levels and plummets below $16,000.
The 4-hour chart shows that the rebound off the lower levels has hit a wall near the 50-simple moving average, which is placed just below the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level of $18,210.77.
If the bears can sink the price below $17,500, a retest of $16,400 will be on the cards. If the bulls again buy at lower levels, a few days of range-bound action could ensue.
On the contrary, if the bulls can propel the price above $18,210.77, a retest of $19,459.22 is possible.
ETH/USD
The long tails on the Nov. 26 and 27 candlesticks show that the bulls purchased the dips in Ether (ETH) to the breakout level of $488.134 aggressively. This suggests that the sentiment remains positive.
The upsloping moving averages and the RSI in the positive zone suggest that bulls have the upper hand. However, the buyers are unlikely to have an easy path to $625. The bears will try to stall the current rally at the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level of $569.019.
If the price turns down from this resistance and breaks the 20-day EMA ($512), then a retest of $482 will be on the cards.
Conversely, if the bulls can push the price above $569.019, the ETH/USD pair could rally to $592.674 and then $622.807. A breakout of this level may start the next leg of the uptrend that could propel the pair to $800.
The 4-hour chart shows that the bears are defending the 50-SMA. If the price turns down from the current levels and drops below $520, a retest of $482 will be on the cards.
However, if the bulls can push the price above $569.019, a rally to $592.674 and then to $622.807 is possible.
Traders can keep an eye on the RSI because if it sustains above 60, it will suggest that bulls are back in command. On the other hand, if the RSI turns down from 60, it will suggest resistance at higher levels and that could result in a few days of range-bound action.
ADA/USD
Cardano's ADA had corrected to $0.1199845 on Nov. 26, just above the 78.6% Fibonacci retracement level of $0.1173063. Usually, such a large fall reduces the possibility of the continuation of the uptrend.
However, the long tail on the Nov. 26 candlestick and the sharp rebound on Nov. 28 has again brought the bulls back in contention. The bounce shows that the bull aggressively purchased at lower levels.
The upsloping moving averages and the RSI near the overbought territory suggest that bulls are in command. If the bulls can thrust the price above $0.1826315, the next leg of the uptrend to $0.2129 and then to $0.235 could begin.
Contrary to this assumption, if the price turns down from the $0.1826315 resistance, the ADA/USD pair may remain range-bound for a few days.
The upsloping moving averages on the 4-hour chart and the RSI in the positive zone show that the bulls have the upper hand. The buyers will now try to drive the price above $0.175 resistance.
If they can do that, a retest of $0.1826315 is possible. Conversely, if the price turns down from the overhead resistance, the pair could remain range-bound for a few days. A break below the moving averages will suggest that the bears have made a comeback.
XLM/USD
The correction in Stellar Lumens (XLM), from the recent highs of $0.231655 on Nov. 25, only lasted only for a day on Nov. 26. This suggests that the bulls aggressively purchased the dips as they expect the rally to extend further.
The upsloping moving averages and the RSI in the overbought territory suggest that bulls are in command. The buyers made their intention clear with the 22.83% rally on Nov. 27.
If the bulls can push the price above $0.231655, the next leg of the uptrend could begin. The next level to watch on the upside is $0.2933.
However, the bears have other plans as they are trying to stall the up-move in the $0.22 to $0.2316555 resistance zone.
The bulls are attempting to defend the 20-EMA. If the price bounces off this support, the bulls will try to push it above the downtrend line. If they succeed, a retest of $0.231655 will be on the cards.
Contrary to this assumption, if the bears sink the price below the 20-EMA, the pair could drop to the 50-SMA. If that happens, the pair may consolidate in a large symmetrical triangle for a few days.
The advantage will shift in favor of the bears if the pair drops below the $0.145 to $0.140 support zone.
XEM/USD
NEM (XEM) broke out and closed above $0.1690655 on Nov. 25 but the long wick on the day’s candlestick showed that the bulls booked profits at higher levels. That was followed by a sharp decline on Nov. 26.
However, the bulls purchased the dip to the 20-day EMA ($0.147) as seen from the long tail on the Nov. 26 candlestick. The bulls pushed the price back above the overhead resistance on Nov. 27.
The price has sustained above $0.1690655 for the past two days but the bulls are facing resistance close to $0.190. The bears are currently attempting to sink the price back below $0.1690655. If they succeed, a drop to the 20-day EMA will be on the cards.
Conversely, if the bulls can push the price above the $0.190 to $0.2122 resistance zone, the next leg of the uptrend to $0.275 could begin.
The bulls are currently attempting to defend the critical support at $0.1690655. If the pair rebounds off this support, the bulls will try to push the price above the downtrend line. If they succeed, the XEM/USD pair could rise to the $0.203 to $0.2122 resistance zone.
Contrary to this assumption, if the bears sink the price below $0.1690655, a drop to the 50-SMA is possible. A break below this level could result in a retest of the $0.1428512 support.
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.
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