Decentral Block Post

The price of Ether (ETH) rallied 16% between Jan. 14 and Jan. 21, peaking at $1,680 before facing a 5.4% rejection. Curiously, the same resistance level resulted in a substantial correction in late August 2022 and again in early November 2022. 

From one side, traders are relieved that Ether is trading up 35.5% year-to-date, but the repeated corrections that follow retests of the $1,680 resistance may have weakened investors' sentiment.

Negative newsflow might have limited Ether investors' appetite after troubled cryptocurrency company Digital Currency Group (DCG) faced more legal issues this week. On Jan. 23, a group of Genesis Capital creditors filed a lawsuit alleging violations of federal securities laws. In addition, the plaintiffs allege the lending firm made false and misleading statements through a scheme to defraud potential and existing digital asset lenders.

Another new concerns for Ether holders came on Jan. 22 after, a "temperature check" proposal to deploy the Uniswap v3 protocol to BNB Chain received overwhelming support from the Uniswap community. 80% of Uniswap's UNI governance token holders have voted to deploy the additional version of the decentralized exchange protocol.

On the bright side, Ethereum developers have created a testing environment for the upcoming Shanghai network upgrade. According to Ethereum developer Marius Van Der Wijden, the testnet appears to have been created to evaluate staking withdrawals, which are currently disabled on the mainnet. Over 14.5 million ETH (worth $23 billion) has been deposited into the Ethereum staking contract, and harsh criticism followed the multiple delays in enabling withdrawals.

Solana’s (SOL) recent 250% rally to $25 has shocked many investors in the crypto market. At the same time, traders who had eyes on the negative funding rate for SOL in the futures market could have anticipated the bullish move ahead of others.

It’s because excessive negative funding rates, like the one in Solana displayed below, implies that the majority of traders are on the short side, providing an opportunity for buyers to run their stops.

Regardless of the reason behind the price increase, if enough buyers are interested in joining the bullish move, it can turn into a medium-to-long-term bullish trend. However, Solana's fundamental and market analysis shows weakness, which will more likely cause a steep correction in the altcoin.

Solana finds a worthy competitor in NFT space

Solana ranks second in terms of NFT trading across blockchain platforms. Ethereum commands the lion's share of the total NFT trading volume with an 81.6% share. Solana has the second biggest pie with an 11.6% share, according to data from Delphi Digital.

However, the ecosystem received a setback when two of the largest projects in DeGods and y00ts decided to shift away from Solana. The departure of top-performing projects sets a bad precedent for product developers looking to launch NFTs. To date, Ethereum remains the go-to choice for big brands and community projects.

The metaverse hype that began in 2021 dissolved almost entirely by the end of 2022 as the top projects in the space, Decentraland and The Sandbox, lost 95% of their market capitalization. The most prominent reason for the fall was a lack of user growth. 

Still, the metaverse narrative is far from dead and will grow in the future. Reportedly, Apple will launch its virtual reality gear sometime in spring 2023. The announcement was a positive catalyst for Decentraland’s MANA and The Sandbox’s SAND, causing a double-digit price surge.

While there’s evidence of positive buying volume supporting the pump, the weak fundamentals of metaverse platforms and overheated market indicators suggest that the price pump risks reversing quickly.

The Apple pump-and-dump

Facebook’s (Meta) foray into the metaverse was one of the most prominent catalysts for metaverse tokens. The idea for Decentraland’s and The Sandbox’s growth is that a decentralized metaverse would flourish more than Meta’s centralized version.

However, the technology has yet to become popular among the masses. In 2022, the percentage of VR users among Steam gamers was less than 2%, and the usage has yet to grow over the past two years. This is discouraging for the technology’s adoption because the gaming sector was the first to embrace it.

Bitcoin (BTC) traded sideways at the Jan. 24 Wall Street open with analysts at a loss over where price would go next.

BTC price holds below key resistance

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView tracked a day of consolidation for BTC/USD, which continued to linger near $23,000.

The pair saw little reaction to the start of trading, including technical problems at the New York Stock Exchange, while United States macroeconomic data also failed to change the status quo.

Bitcoin thus lacked direction after establishing a narrower trading range on Jan. 20.

“Bitcoin couldn't break through a crucial resistance at $23.1K,” Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe summarized.

Ether's (ETH) rally versus Bitcoin (BTC) is not only showing signs of exhaustion, but is also in danger of breaking below a key technical support level. 

ETH slides vs. BTC in second half of January

The ETH/BTC pair declined nearly 9.25% on Jan. 24 from its local top of 0.0779 BTC established on Jan. 11. Since the start of the year, Bitcoin is slightly outpacing Ether in USD terms, rising 38% versus 35%, respectively.

Interestingly, Ether's pullback versus Bitcoin has landed its price at the bottom of its EMA ribbon range, as shown below.

The EMA ribbon indicator shows numerous exponential moving averages of increasing timeframe on the same price chart. Dropping below the ribbon range increases an asset's likelihood of seeing an extended down-move.

So in other words, breaking lower would increase its possibility of declining by more than 20% from its current price levels.

Bitcoin (BTC) has an important new price target for bulls to meet — and it is closer than it seems.

As noted by Philip Swift, co-founder of trading suite Decentrader, $25,000 is now a critical BTC price level.

Bitcoin price rally near "a lot of liquidity"

After putting in 40% gains in January, Bitcoin continues to consolidate around the $23,000.

Opinions are split as to what will happen next — after more than a year of bear market, plenty of market participants expect a dramatic correction and even new multi-year lows of $12,000 or worse.

Others believe that the good times can continue and even see BTC/USD reach $30,000 before checking its relief rally.

Bitcoin (BTC) rallied 11% between Jan. 20 and Jan. 21, reaching the $23,000 level and shattering bears' expectations for a pullback to $20,000. Even more notable is the move brought demand from Asia-based retail investors, according to data from a key stablecoin premium indicator.

Traders should note that the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index also gained 5.1% between Jan. 20 and Jan. 23, fueled by investors’ hope in China reopening for business after its COVID-19 lockdowns and weaker-than-expected economic data in the U.S. and the Eurozone.

Another bit of bullish information came on Jan. 20 after U.S. Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller reinforced the market expectation of a 25 basis point interest rate increase in February. A handful of heavyweight companies are expected to report their latest quarterly earnings this week to complete the puzzle, including Microsoft, IBM, Visa, Tesla and Mastercard.

In essence, the central bank is aiming for a “soft landing,“ or a controlled decline of the economy, with fewer job openings and less inflation. However, if companies struggle with their balance sheets due to the increased cost of capital, earnings tend to nosedive and ultimately layoffs will be much higher than anticipated.

On Jan. 23, on-chain analytics firm Glassnode pointed out that long-term Bitcoin investors held losing positions for over a year, so those are likely more resilient to future adverse price movements.