Bitcoin and Ether Market Update May 12, 2022
Total crypto market cap erased $346 billion from its valuation for the period since Monday and now stands at $1.18 trillion. The top ten coins were all in red for the last 24 hours with Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA) being the worst performers with 35.8 and 32.8 percent of losses respectively. At the time of writing bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $27,780. Ether (ETH) is at $1,900.
BTC/USD
Bitcoin closed the trading day on Sunday, May 8 at $34,032 with a 3.8 percent loss. This was the fourth consecutive red candle on the daily chart for the biggest cryptocurrency since it was rejected at the dynamic resistance in the form of the 21-day EMA and the lower boundary of the bear flag pattern.
It erased 11.7 percent from its market cap on a weekly basis. This was the sixth week in red in a row.
On Monday, the BTC/USDT pair continued its freefall as the Relative Strength Indicator (RSI) entered the oversold territory while the 24-hour trading volumes increased dramatically. Bears pushed the price down to $30,000 for the first time since the July 2021 market crash.
The Tuesday session was when bulls attempted a comeback. BTC bounced back up to $32,680 intraday and closed the day at $31,112 with some negligible gains.
The mid-week session on Wednesday came with a renewed selling pressure and a new yearly low – this time $29,000.
The disappointing inflation data from the United States made the situation even worse as all risk assets across the traditional finance and crypto industry were seeing double-digit losses.
What we are seeing on Thursday, May 12 is a daily low of $26,675 – the lowest point of BTC since December 2020.
ETH/USD
The Ethereum Project token ETH is in a steep downtrend since hitting the 200 MA on the daily timeframe back in early April. Last Sunday, May 8, the coin closed the week at $2,519 which corresponded to a 10.6 percent loss on a seven-day basis.
The ether lost the weekly and monthly horizontal supports as well as the long-term diagonal support. It also broke below the lower boundary of the bear flag pattern which effectively put it at risk of re-visiting $1,500 in the next weeks or months if we are to follow the technical analysis rules.
On Monday, the ETH/USDT pair found a new 3-month low at $2,227 while erasing another 11 percent. The altcoin market was bleeding as a result of the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin de-peg which sparkled a bank run that led to double-digit losses across all digital assets, particularly LUNA which lost more than 90 percent of its valuation.
We saw a relief bounce to $2,357 on Tuesday, but the market could not stabilize.
The third day of the workweek came with a drop to $2,077 as bulls were preparing to defend the psychological level of $2,000. Even the upcoming Ethereum blockchain merge and migration to a Proof of stake consensus mechanism could not ease their selling activity.
What we are seeing on Thursday, May 12 is another 10 percent drop in the price of ETH. It is close to the July 2021 low.
