Bitcoin, Ether, Major Altcoins – Weekly Market Update January 25, 2021
The total crypto market cap lost $41 billion of its value for the last seven-days and now stands at $985.2 billion. The top 10 currencies showed mixed results for the same time period with ether (ETH) and Polkadot (DOT) adding 14.9 and 7.8 percent to their values respectively while bitcoin (BTC) erased 7.3 percent. By the time of writing bitcoin is trading at $34,115, ether is at $1,410.
BTC/USD
Bitcoin closed the trading day on Sunday, January 17 at $35,779. It was the third straight day in red for the leading cryptocurrency after it was rejected at $40,000 on January 14.
Not only that, but it was trading as low as $33,741 at some point during the intraday session, touching the lower limit of the symmetrical triangle formation on the daily chart. BTC ended the week with 6.4 lower compared to the previous seven-day period.
On Monday, the BTC/USD pair once again hit the $34,800 horizontal support and fell below the 100-day EMA on the 4-hour timeframe before rebounding in the afternoon forming a green candle to $36,600.
Bulls continued to push the price upwards and on the second day of the week reached $37,700 for the second time in the last three days. This zone was also in line with the 61.80% Fibonacci retracement level on the lower timeframes. Bitcoin faced a solid resistance there and retraced down to $35,900, moving below all short-term EMAs.
The mentioned triangle figure was broken down in the morning of Wednesday, January 20, which caused a widespread selloff in the markets. The coin retraced to $33,372 before finding stability near 34,200 and eventually closing at $35,500.
The bear pressure increased dramatically on Thursday, driving the price of BTC below the next major support on the daily timeframe – $32,000. The coin could not stabilize there and hit $30,800, erasing 13.2 percent of its value.
On Friday, January, 22, it fell further down to $28,900, but the already exhausted sellers were quickly replaced by traders who were looking for more attractive prices to enter the market. This triggered a reversal to $33,000.
The weekend of January 23-24 started with revisiting the $32,000 horizontal support on Saturday. Then on Sunday, the $30,800 line was also tested, but BTC once again managed to jump back by forming a short green candle to $32,300.
As of the time of writing, the biggest cryptocurrency is trading above the Fibonacci 38.20 level, near $34,110 on the daily chart. It successfully regained position above the 26-day EMA on the 4-hour chart, which is always a good sign for the short-term trend.
ETH/USD
The Ethereum Project token ETH hit the solid horizontal resistance at $1,230 on Sunday, January 17, and ended the week with a 2.3 percent decrease in price. The daily chart was looking more and more bullish especially after the ether successfully consolidated near $1,050 on January 12. Now it was ready to form another leg up in the search of its new all-time high.
The ETH/USD pair surpassed the mentioned weekly resistance on Monday reaching $1,257. Nonetheless, it was caught in a triangle pattern very similar to the one we discussed for BTC. Unlike the biggest coin, ether managed to break out of it and skyrocketed to the next major daily/weekly resistance at $1,370 on Tuesday, January 19. What’s more, it hit $1,440 during the day session thus registering a new all-time high.
The mid-week session on Wednesday was a wild one for the ETH token as it fell to $1,230 during the sudden market crash before recovering to $1,377 in the evening.
On Thursday, January 21, the coin followed the example of the rest of the major altcoins and initiated a correction. It pulled back to the same old weekly support/resistance at $1,230 and then to $1,110, deleting 19.5 percent in the span of just a few hours.
The Friday session brought some relief for bulls and their preferable coin re-captured $1,230. The ether consolidated in the zone around it on Saturday, remaining flat for the day, then jumped to $1,394 on Sunday.
As of the time of writing, the ETH/USD pair is trading at $1,410. Earlier today, it registered a new all-time high at $1,476.
Leading majors
This week we will review two soon-to-be majors. The DeFi darlings AAVE and UNISWAP.
- AAVE (AAVE)
Literally the best-performing cryptocurrency asset for the last 48 hours, AAVE broke above the $195 resistance on Saturday, January 23, and skyrocketed all the way up to $288 on Sunday evening before closing the week at $265. The coin grew by 40 percent for the weekend only.
There is a lot of uncertainty, however, for where the price of AAVE will go now. It started drawing a red candle on Monday morning but found stability near the $250 level, which might be used as a support and consolidation area in the short-term.
If the DeFi rally continues, then $300 could be the next big level of interest, which will also allow the coin to surpass Uniswap in terms of market cap.
Current price: $250
- UNISWAP (UNI)
Uniswap peaked at $12.9 on Sunday evening, registering a new all-time high. The coin bottomed at the 4-h diagonal support at $7.55 on January, 22 and surpassed the short-term EMA-s on that timeframe to add 64 percent for the three-day period since then. Naturally, the next target for bulls will be $15. Down they will be looking for support at $12, then $11, where we saw some short pullback on the lower timeframes, and the $9-9.5 zone.
Current price: $11.54
Altcoin of the week
Our Altcoin of the week is Enjin Coin (ENJ). The leading “gaming” token added 77 percent to its value for the last seven days and is 189 percent up for the two-week period.
The Enjin protocol network is an ecosystem for blockchain-based gaming products where users can interact and tokenize different in-game items utilizing Ethereum.
The recent surge in the price of ENJ can be attributed to the news that on January 19 the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association authorized the token for use in Japan making it the first gaming coin to achieve that.
ENJIN reacted to the news by moving up to #77 on CoinGecko’s Top 100 list, increasing its market capitalization to approximately $379 million. It peaked at $0.453 on Wednesday, January 20 and as of the time of writing this is trading at $0.41.
