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Ether (ETH) is worth more in Bitcoin (BTC) than at any time since the start of the year amid renewed appetite for altcoins.

Altcoin market cap returns to $700 billio

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView confirms that ETH/BTC has cleared key resistance to pass 0.08 BTC on Aug. 13.

The move is impressive for largest altcoin Ethereum, as the area around 0.075 represented a troublesome sell zone which had previously kept bulls in check for since January.

At the time of writing, ETH/BTC is working to retain the newly-won level, as traders query how long its strength might last.

As Cointelegraph reported earlier, ETH/USD passed $2,000 overnight, a significant psychological boundary in itself unseen since May.

Solana (SOL) risks a significant price correction in the coming weeks owing to a classic bearish reversal setup.

A 35% SOL price correction ahead?

On the three-day chart, SOL's price has been painting a rising wedge, confirmed by two ascending, converging trendlines and falling trading volumes in parallel.

Rising wedges typically result in breakdown, resolving after the asset's price break below the lower trendline. If the price follows the breakdown scenario, it could fall by as much as the maximum distance between the wedge's upper and lower trendline.

SOL is far from a breakdown but trades within a falling wedge range, as shown in the chart below. The token eyes an immediate pullback from the wedge's upper trendline with its interim downside target sitting at the lower trendline around $45. 

It will risk falling toward $30 if the price breaks below the lower trendline while accompanying a rise in trading volumes. In other words, a 35% price drop by September.

Crypto lending platform Celsius Network has an approximately $1.2 billion gap in its balance sheet, with most liabilities owed to its users. In addition, the firm has filed for bankruptcy protection, so its future looks bleak.

Still, Celsius Network's native utility token CEL has soared in valuation by over 4,100% in the last two months, reaching around $3.93 on Aug. 13 compared to its mid-June bottom of $0.093.

In comparison, top coins Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) rallied 40% and 130% in the same period.

Takeover rumors behind CEL explosion?

Technically, the price rally made CEL an excessively valued token in early August when its relative strength index (RSI) crossed above the 70 threshold.

Takeover rumors appear to be behind CEL's upside strength. Notably, Ripple wants to purchase Celsius Network's assets, according to an anonymous source cited by Reuters on Aug. 10.

Bitcoin (BTC) is still due to return to near $20,000, fresh analysis warns as BTC/USD attempts to retest multi-month highs. 

Buy-the-dip set for invalidation at $20,700

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD staging a second run-up to near $25,000 on Aug. 13, so far seeing rejection.

The pair had gained over $1,300 overnight, but as bulls again ran out of momentum near crucial resistance, few were optimistic over Bitcoin avoiding a deeper comedown.

"One last high to rekt early shorts," popular trading account Il Capo of Crypto told Twitter followers.

Similarly cautious was fellow trader Jibon, who said that he would even prefer to wait and "buy higher" than spot price to rule out any trend reversals.

An ascending triangle formation has driven the total crypto market capitalization toward the $1.2 trillion level. The issue with this seven-week-long setup is the diminishing volatility, which could last until late August. From there, the pattern can break either way, but Tether and futures markets data show bulls lacking enough conviction to catalyze an upside break.

Investors cautiously await further macroeconomic data on the state of the economy as the United States Federal Reserve (FED) raises interest rates and places its asset purchase program on hold. On Aug. 12, the United Kingdom posted a gross domestic product (GDP) contraction of 0.1% year-over-year. Meanwhile, inflation in the U.K. reached 9.4% in July, the highest figure seen in 40 years.

The Chinese property market has caused the Fitch Ratings credit agency to issue a “special report” on Aug. 7 to quantify the impact of prolonged distress on a potentially weaker economy in China. Analysts expect asset management and smaller construction and steel-producing companies to suffer the most.

In short, risk asset investors are anxiously waiting for the Federal Reserve and Central Banks across the world to signal that the policy of tightening is coming to an end. On the other hand, expansionary policies are more favorable for scarce assets, including cryptocurrencies.

Sentiment improves to neutral after 4 months

The risk-off attitude caused by increased interest rates has instilled a bearish sentiment into cryptocurrency investors since mid-April. As a result, traders have been unwilling to allocate to volatile assets and sought shelter in U.S. Treasuries, even though their returns do not compensate for inflation.

Bitcoin (BTC) headed lower on Aug. 12 as a broadly expected comedown from two-month highs began to take shape.

200-week moving average becomes pivot

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD dipping to $23,615 on Bitstamp prior to the day's Wall Street open, marking 24-hour losses of around 5.2%.

The pair had seen its highest levels since June 13 as enthusiasm over declining United States inflation combined with news that the world's largest asset manager, BlackRock, was launching a Bitcoin private fund.

While some commentators hoped for Bitcoin to tackle resistance closer to $30,000 as a result, others remained cautious, with suspicions that a fresh downtrend could ensue remaining.

"Volume is dying. Channels are not impulses but corrections," popular trading account Il Capo of Crypto wrote in its latest update on the day.

After years of waiting, Ethereum is finally prepared to become a full-fledged proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. Besides Ethereum’s native token, Ether (ETH), the valuation of several other tokens has not only benefited greatly but could also keep outperforming ETH after the Merge. 

Ethereum steps closer toward the Merge

The leading smart contract platform completed the last of its three public testnets, dubbed Goerli, on Aug. 11. Therefore, there should be no delays in Ethereum’s Merge, expected to go live on Sept. 19.

Ether price jumped 5% to approximately $1,950, its highest level in over two months, after the Goerli update. Meanwhile, certain crypto assets that could benefit from a successful Merge are undergoing upside moves and have even been outperforming ETH in the past month.

Will these tokens continue to outperform ETH price into September? Let’s take a closer look.

Lido DAO (LDO)

The Merge will replace Ethereum’s army of miners with validators, who will be required to front 32 ETH as an economic stake.

Ether’s (ETH) impressive 85% gain in the past 30 days has surprised even the most bullish investors, and it makes the $800 range seen in mid-July seem like ages ago. Bulls now hope to turn $1,900 to support, but derivatives metrics tell a completely different story, and the data suggests that professional traders remain highly skeptical.

It’s important to remember that the leading cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC), gained 28% in the same period. Thus, there should be no doubt that the Ether bull run was driven by the Merge expectation, a transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus network.

Goerli was the last remaining Ethereum testnet scheduled to implement the Merge, which officially became a proof-of-stake blockchain as of 1:45 UTC on Aug. 11. This final hurdle was completed with no major setbacks, giving a green light for the mainnet transition on Sept. 15 or 16.

There is a rationale behind investors’ booming expectations toward this major landmark transition. Such a multiphased upgrade aims for higher scalability and extremely low fees due to sharding, the parallel processing mechanism. However, the only change in the Merge is the complete removal of the burdensome mining mechanism.

In a nutshell, the equivalent inflation will be drastically cut as miners no longer need to be compensated by newly minted coins. Still, the Merge does not address the processing limit, or the amount of data that can be validated and inserted into each block.

Bitcoin (BTC) continued toward $25,000 on the Aug. 11 Wall Street open amid news that the world's largest asset manager had launched a BTC product.

Silbert on BlackRock: “Here comes Wall Street"

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed BTC/USD as it spiked to $24,921 on Bitstamp as United States stock trading got underway.

While going on to consolidate slightly below the highs, the pair inspired confidence in market sentiment, with popular crypto industry figures already seeing positive implications of the BlackRock move.

"Here comes Wall Street...," former Grayscale CEO, Barry Silbert, commented.

For Blockware lead insights analyst William Clemente, the news was a landmark event in Bitcoin’s history.

Bitcoin (BTC) pierced the top of a stubborn trading range on Aug. 11 as a decidedly awkward rally took hold of risk assets.

Bitcoin retracement warnings intensify near $25,000

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD hitting highs of $24,750 on Bitstamp, marking its best performance since June 13.

The pair had attempted several breakouts to the top of the range in prior weeks, these all failing in the face of stiff selling pressure.

New United States inflation data released this week formed a long-awaited catalyst for change, however, with Bitcoin and altcoins rising in step with equities as the Consumer Price Index (CPI) print for July suggested that inflation had peaked.

On Aug. 10, the day of the release, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite Index gained 2.1% and 1.9% respectively. BTC/USD, on the other hand, saw a daily candle of around $900.

Ethereum’s native asset, Ether (ETH), has more than doubled in value since bottoming out at around $885 in June 2022. Now, it eyes a decisive move toward $2,500 in August per a slew of technical and fundamental indicators.

Ethereum chain split means more tokens

A big part of Ether’s ongoing rally has appeared due to the Merge, a network upgrade that will switch Ethereum's underlying blockchain protocol from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) in September.

Simultaneously, switching to PoS will also eliminate the role of miners in the chain by replacing them with validators. This fear has prompted Chandler Guo, a Chinese crypto miner, to resist the Merge by keeping Ethereum’s PoW version alive.

A chain split is possible as a result. Guo has already branded his version of the Ethereum PoW chain as ETHPoW, alongside its native token ETHW. Furthermore, some crypto exchanges have already listed the token for trading, with even Binance considering doing the same, if necessary. 

A key takeaway from a potential chain split is existing Ether holders will receive an equal amount of tokens from the new chains.

Bitcoin (BTC) price continues to battle at the $24,000 resistance and the price was rejected there on Aug. 10, but the rejection was not enough to knock the price out of the 52-day-long ascending channel. The channel has a $22,500 support and this bullish formation suggests that the BTC price will eventually hit the $29,000 level by early October.

Bitcoin derivatives data does show a lack of interest from leveraged longs (bulls), but at the same time, it does not price higher odds of a surprise crash. Curiously, the most recent Bitcoin downturn on Aug. 9 was accompanied by a negative performance from U.S.-listed stocks.

On Aug. 8, chip and video graphics card maker Nvidia Corp (NVDA) announced that its 2Q sales would present a 19% drop compared to the previous quarter. Moreover, the U.S. Senate passed a bill on Aug. 6 that could negatively impact corporate earnings. Despite freeing $430 billion to fund "climate, healthcare and tax," the provision would impose a 1% tax on the stock buyback by publicly traded companies.

The high correlation of traditional assets to cryptocurrencies remains a huge concern for some investors. Investors should not be getting ahead of themselves even if inflationary pressure recedes because the U.S. Fed monitors employment data very closely. The latest reading displayed a 3.5% unemployment typical of overly heated markets, forcing the monetary authority to keep raising interest rates and revoking stimulus debt purchase programs.

Reducing risk positions should be the norm until investors clearly indicate that the U.S. Central Bank is closer to easing the tighter monetary policies. That is precisely why crypto traders are following macroeconomic numbers so closely.

Bitcoin (BTC) regained $24,000 but failed to hit new multi-month highs on Aug. 10 as United States inflation appeared to be slowing.

CPI cuts risk assets much-needed slack

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView confirmed hourly gains of around $1,000 after U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for July showed a slowdown versus the previous month.

While managing $24,179 on Bitstamp, BTC/USD nonetheless did not attract enough momentum to challenge levels from the day prior.

Nonetheless, relief among traders was palpable, as declining inflation should signal to the Federal Reserve that less aggressive interest rate hikes are necessary going forward. This,  in turn, should reduce pressure on risk assets, including crypto.

Year-on-year CPI inflation came in at 8.5%, 0.2% below expectations, while month-on-month, the figure was unchanged from June.

Tornado Cash (TORN) has lost almost half its market valuation two days after being slapped with sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department.

The department accused Tornado Cash, a crypto mixer platform, of laundering more than $7 billion in cryptocurrencies, including a stash of $455 million allegedly stolen by North Korea-based hackers.

Immediate reactions were followed by U.S.-based crypto companies, including Circle and Coinbase. In a controversial move, the popular crypto firms blocked the movements of their jointly-issued stablecoin USDC tied to Tornado Cash's blacklisted smart contracts.

TORN price drops 45%

The news prompted traders to limit their exposure to TORN, Tornado Cash's native token.

On the daily chart, TORN's price has slipped by approximately 45% since the Justice Department's notice about Tornado Cash, to reach $18.50 on Aug. 10. By contrast, the valuation of all the crypto assets had plunged merely 6% in the same timeframe.  

Bitcoin (BTC) hit multi-day lows into Aug. 10 as crypto traders braced for impact with fresh United States inflation data. 

Trader: Market "could get ugly" if CPI keeps rising

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD dipping to $22,668 on Bitstamp at the most recent daily close — its lowest since Aug. 5.

Bullish momentum had evaporated during the day prior, and the mood among traders was firmly risk-off as markets awaited the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) readout.

Covering July, the data was due at 8.30am Eastern time Aug. 10, with expectations demanding it show that U.S. inflation had already peaked.

“CPI prints have been pretty pitoval for BTC price action,” Blockware lead insights analyst William Clemente wrote in part of a tweet about the event, adding that CPI would form a “big day” for crypto.

The aggregate total value locked (TVL) in the crypto market measures the amount of funds deposited in smart contracts and this figure declined from $160 billion in mid-April to the current $70 billion, which is the lowest level since March 2021. While this 66% contraction is worrying, a great deal of data suggests that the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector is resilient.

The issue with using TVL as a broad metric is the lack of detail that is not shown. For example, the number of DeFi transactions, growth of layer-2 scaling solutions and venture capital inflows in the ecosystem are not reflected in the metric.

In DappRadar's July 29 Crypto adoption report, data shows that the DeFi 2Q transaction count closed down by 15% versus the previous quarter. This figure is far less concerning than the devastating TVL decline and is corroborated by a 12% drop in the number of unique active wallets in the same period.

Layer-2 is the path for sustainable DeFi growth

Iakov Levin, CEO and founder of Midas Investments told Cointelegraph that:

"I am firmly convinced that the current bear market is not the 'end' of the DeFi industry. For instance, there is a growing competition amongst decentralized exchanges on layer-2 Ethereum scaling platform Optimism, as Velodrome reached more than $130 million in TVL."

Crypto and equities markets took a bit of a tumble on Aug. 9 as traders grew a bit skittish ahead of tomorrow’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report. The details of the print will shine a light on whether the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest hikes are effective in tamping runaway inflation and it could have an impact on the size of future hikes. 

Earlier in the week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggested that July data will reflect the United States reaching peak inflation and that any recession will be “mild to moderate.” Right now, the consensus is that July data will be lower than the record-breaking 9.1% figure seen in June. The price of energy commodities (oil, natural gas) noticeably decreased in July and the Fed is hopeful that the previous back-to-back 0.75 basis-point hikes will combat soaring prices in other parts of the economy.

As is custom, Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereu (ETH) and most altcoins pulled back as traders de-risk ahead of the CPI print. BTC price dropped as low as $22,800, while Ether corrected to $1,670. The rationale that traders are sheltering in stablecoins is sensible, but from a technical analysis point of view, Aug. 9’s pullback is simply a lower support test after the most recent support-resistance flip of the past week, and large-cap assets like ETH and BTC continue to trade within their multi-week ranges.

According to independent market analyst Michaël van de Poppe, the fear surrounding the Aug. 10 CPI is “unwarranted” and once the series of retests is complete, BTC price should rally toward $28,000.

Adding to the narrative that the current pullback is “expected”, trader @52kskew suggested that BTC’s price action is being impacted by a “healthy unwinding in perps” as spot Bitcoin is sold at a “logical resistance.”

Bitcoin (BTC) is facing fresh competition from altcoins this month as data shows that — technically — it is already "alt season."

Figures from CoinMarketCap and TradingView show that BTC currently makes up around 41% of the overall crypto market capitalization — its lowest since the start of 2022.

Bitcoin sheds market cap prowess

After suffering at the hands of the Terra LUNA — now renamed Terra Classic (LUNC) — collapse, altcoin markets have rallied considerably in recent months. 

Alongside Bitcoin's return from 18-month lows of $17,600 in June, altcoins have enjoyed their own renaissance, one tha is now giving Bitcoin bulls a run for their money. 

According to CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin's market cap share is now at its lowest since mid-January, with the largest altcoin Ether (ETH), in particular, stealing the limelight in recent weeks.

An Ethereum fork token that does not yet exist, dubbed ETHW, is trading under $100 across several crypto exchanges after debuting at $30. 

ETHW and ETHS begin trading 

ETHW is the native asset to the ETHPoW chain. ETHPoW, for now, is a possible new chain backed by proof-of-work (PoW) miners as the original chain switches to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus in September's "Merge" event.

Meanwhile, the proof-of-stake version ETHS is trading at around $1,600, or the difference between the ETH price and the ETHW price. 

As a result of this potential chain split, anyone holding a certain number of the original chain's Ether (ETH), will automatically receive an equal amount of ETHW tokens. Such speculations have prompted some exchanges to list ETHW for trading in advance.

For instance, Poloniex announced support for both ETHW, as well as ETHS, the PoS chain token, listed for trading against Ether.