Bitcoin, Ether, Major Altcoins – Weekly Market Update January 24, 2022
The total crypto market cap erased $508 billion from its value for the last seven days and now stands at $1,53 billion. The top 10 coins were all in red for the same time period with Solana (SOL) and Polkadot (DOT) being the worst performers with 42 and 40 percent of losses respectively. Bitcoin (BTC) is currently trading at $33,770 while ether (ETH) is at $2,252.
BTC/USD
Bitcoin remained flat during the previous weekend trading but still ended the seven-day period at $43,000 and with a 2.6 percent of price increase. The coin successfully bounced back up from the January 10 low when it hit $39,500, but was struggling to initiate a reversal to the upside since then.
It is worth noting again that the $40,000 horizontal support is the neckline of the big head and shoulders pattern the biggest cryptocurrency started drawing back in September 2021. A break below this line would give bears full control over the market.
On Monday, January 17, the BTC/USDT pair started moving in the downward direction. It lost 2.1 percent to end the trading day at $42,200.
Then on Tuesday, it fell even lower – to $41,200 during the intraday trading, but bulls were quick to react and pushed the price back up to $42,400, forming a small green candle on the daily timeframe.
The third day of the workweek came with another re-test of the zone below $41,500. The coin, however, successfully bounced back from its daily low and closed with a small loss at $41,700.
On Thursday, January 20, buyers once again pushed the price up to the 21-day EMA but failed to build an upside momentum, which resulted in a drop to $40,780.
The Friday session came with a flash crash like the one last seen in early December 2021. BTC lost 10 percent and lost the $40,000 support to reach $36,400.
The weekend of January 22-23 came with a continuation of the downtrend on Saturday when the biggest cryptocurrency hit a 6-month low at $33,980.
Then on Sunday, it bounced back to $36,227 in what many believed to be the beginning of a short-term relief rally.
The new week started with a new low – $33,780 as of the time of writing.
ETH/USD
The Ethereum project token ETH was on its way up ever since it touched the $2,925 low on January 10. Bulls, however, were unable to surpass the $3,400 resistance, which was a significant S/R line also back in August/September 2021.
The ETH/USDT pair ended the previous week with a 5.8 percent price increase.
On Monday, January 17 the coin dropped down to $3,200 erasing 4.3 percent of its value during the session.
Things did not change drastically on Tuesday and the leading altcoin continued to lose ground. It moved lower, to $3,160 as the Relative Strength Index (RSI) could not escape the oversold area.
On Wednesday, January 19, the coin re-tested the September 2021 weekly bottom line at $3,060 but managed to partially recover in the evening part of the session and closed above the mentioned support.
The Thursday session brought an end to the trading in the $3,400 – $3,000 range. ETH broke the mentioned weekly line and closed at $2,990.
The last day of the workweek came with a 14 percent drop and a new lower low on the daily timeframe chart – $2,571. The trading volumes were increasing as the entire cryptocurrency market was bleeding with some coins losing 20+ percent.
The ether hit a 5-month low on Saturday, January 22 by reaching 2,309 during the intraday trading. It closed the day at $2,400.
On Sunday, it climbed up to $2,536 as bulls were already looking for longs hoping for the exhaustion of the downtrend. The ETH/USDT pair closed the seven-day period with a 24 percent loss.
What we are seeing on Monday morning is an 11.8 percent drop as of the time of writing.
Cardano is far from doing great since we last checked on it. One of the biggest Ethereum competitors, which is still not fully active due to a lack of decentralized apps (daps) running on its blockchain, lost 21 percent of its value and is now back where it started in 2022 – right at the extremely solid horizontal support at $1.
What we can expect from here is a raise in the buying activity in the current zone of trading given the fact it is basically acting as the biggest demand zone for ADA, but only if the market sentiment improves in the coming days.
A falling price with raising volumes is usually a bad sign and means bears are in full control of the market. A confirmed clean break below the $1 mark will be catastrophic for the Cardano protocol at least in the short to mid-term.
Current price: $0.992.
Altcoin of the Week
It is really hard to find a well-performing altcoin in these turbulent times, so we have chosen a different strategy this time – to scan for the least impacted coins.
One of them is Osmosis (OSMO). This cryptocurrency project is the leading automated market maker (AMM) on the Cosmos ecosystem. It is using the Cosmos SDK to provide its users with a decentralized exchange that can also be expanded to all Tendermint-based blockchains via the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC).
As of the time of writing Osmosis is the 25th project by Total Value Locked (as per DeFi Llama) with $1.13 billion locked, with a 46.7 percent growth on a 30-day basis.
It is no surprise the OSMO coin lost “just” 16 percent during last week’s blood bath. As a matter of fact, it is trading now 47 percent above its registered seven-day low, which is an impressive comeback. The OSMO/USDT pair is currently trading at $7.9
The previously stable horizontal support in the $8.5-$9 area will be now acting as a resistance at least in the short-term. Support in the zone right above $5.
