Bitcoin, Ether, Major Altcoins – Weekly Market Update May 16, 2022

The total crypto market cap erased $219 billion from its value in the last seven days and now stands at $1.27 trillion. The top 10 coins were all in red for the same time period with Solana (SOL) and XRP (XRP) being the worst performers losing 27.2 and 25.5 percent of losses respectively. Bitcoin (BTC) is currently trading at $29,920 while ether (ETH) is at 2,030.

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.

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 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.

On Thursday, May 12 BTC hit its lowest point since December 2020 by dropping all the way down to $26,782. The session was marked by high volatility, but it started to seem like the overall selling activity has hit its peak.

On Friday, Bitcoin made an unexpected jump to $31,100 before closing the day with a small green candle to $29,300.

The weekend of May 14-15 started with a good session for bulls on Saturday. The BTC/USDT pair climbed up to $30,150. Things did not change much on Sunday and the price rally was extended to $31,300.

The coin is trading lower early on Monday.

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. It closed the previous 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 Proof of stake consensus mechanism could not ease their selling activity.

On Thursday, May 12 we saw something that many called a capitulation candle. The ether erased another 6 percent of its market cap and closed the session at $1,964 after briefly hitting the $1,777 mark during intraday testing of the July 2021 bottom.

The Friday session was seen as a relief bounce. The ETH token jumped up to $2,015 and formed its second green candle on the daily chart since May 4.

The first day of the weekend came with a continuation of the upside reversal, but the leading altcoin was still below its short-term diagonal downtrend.

On Sunday, bulls pushed the price of ETH up to $2,150 successfully surpassing the mentioned dynamic resistance.

What we are seeing midday on Monday is a pullback to the area around $2,030.

Leading Majors

• Avalanche (AVAX)

It seems like the Layer 1 protocols era is coming to an end and Terra (LUNA) was the first major chain to take a hit. However, AVAX is not far behind in terms of bad performance in the last few weeks and months.

The coin has deleted 80 percent of its market cap since peaking at $149 back in November 2022, 30 percent of which in the last seven days alone. The AVAX/USDT pair was trading 50 percent lower at some point last week in the fallout of the LUNA crash but managed to recover to the zone above its old horizontal support above $30.

DefiLlama shows a 36 percent decrease in the total value locked (TVL) in the Avalanche ecosystem for the same time period.

What we can expect from AVAX if the market turns short-term bullish is to attempt a break above the $40 mark which is an important S/R level on the daily chart. Support in the $25-$30 area.

Altcoin of the week

Our Altcoin of the week is Maker (MKR). The MakerDAO project added 32 percent to its value for the last seven days in an extremely volatile trading period during which we saw the MKR/USDT pair moving up and down the wide range between $960 and $2,278.

MAKER is the creator of the popular collateralized stablecoin DAI which remained stable and hard pegged to the US dollar during last week’s UST crash despite the contracted demand.

MRK is currently trading below the multi-timeframe resistance right above $1,700 and still below the long-term diagonal downtrend on the weekly chart. We can consider the psychological level of $1,000 as the next big support for MAKER.

The coin is ranked at #50 on CoinGecko with a total market cap of approximately $1.37 billion.