Bitcoin, Ether, Major Altcoins – Weekly Market Update May 17, 2021
The total crypto market cap erased $368 billion of its value for the last seven days and now stands at $2,113 billion. The top 10 coins were mostly in red for the same time period with Litecoin (LTC) being the worst performer by losing 25.4 percent. Bitcoin (BTC) is currently trading at $45,150, ether (ETH) is at $3,520.
BTC/USD
Bitcoin closed the trading day on Sunday, May 9 at $58,242 after hovering around the 50-day EMA on the daily chart throughout the week. The biggest cryptocurrency managed to regain positions above the important $56,000 level but was still struggling to surpass the important multi-timeframe resistance at $59,000. It was 2.8 percent up on a seven-day basis.
The most important thing about last week’s action was that BTC was able to confirm the bullish engulfment on the weekly chart thus keeping the uptrend intact.
On Monday, the BTC/USDT pair was once again rejected at the mentioned resistance, which triggered a selloff. The pair was trading in the wide $59,500 – $53,300 range during intraday before closing at $56,000.
The second day of the workweek was relatively calm as neither buyers nor bulls were able to push the price in any direction. Bitcoin formed a short green candle to $56,600, once again climbing above the 21-day EMA.
The mid-week session was when bulls finally capitulated after cracking under the seller’s pressure. BTC lost 12.4 percent of its value fell below the $50k mark for the first time since April 25, eventually closing at $49,500.
It is worth noting that on the daily timeframe, the BTC/USDT pair was in a clear Diamond Pattern formation, which usually marks the beginning of a deeper correction. Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk put additional pressure on the market announcing that the company stopped offering BTC as a payment method over concerns about the impact of the mining process on the environment.
The coin stayed flat on Thursday and Friday but was extremely volatile during the intraday trading. First on May 13, it was moving in the $51,300 – $45,800 range then on the next day – in the narrow $51,300 – $49,000 zone.
The first day of the weekend came with a solid 6.5 percent drop to $46,600 as BTC broke below the mid-term uptrend corridor. Then on Sunday it temporarily broke below the $46,000 support, just to close with a small red candle to $46,300.
On the weekly timeframe, the BTC/USDT pair hit the 21-day EMA and registered a 20 percent decrease.
The selloff continued on Monday as the biggest cryptocurrency moved below the lower boundary of the long-term uptrend corridor.
ETH/USD
The Ethereum project token ETH was moving steadily in a solid uptrend, uncorrelated to the recent technical and fundamental issues faced by Bitcoin. Even the sky-high Ethereum network transaction fees could not push users away from using the leading Defi platforms.
To prove the above statement, ether closed the session on Sunday, May 9 flat at $3,922 after adding 33.4 percent to its valuation on a weekly basis.
ETH registered a new all-time high on Monday hitting $4,195 in the early hours of trading but made a full retrace later in the session, remaining in the same price range as the last two days.
On Tuesday, it made yet another 5.3 percent jump, but this time was able to keep the gains and ended the day at $4,180.
The ETH/USDT pair initiated a pullback during the mid-week session on Wednesday as the entire cryptocurrency market was experiencing a double-digit price correction. The leading altcoin was no exception erasing 9 percent and moving down to the previous uptrend resistance line.
On Thursday, it hit the potential support line at $3,500 during intraday before closing at $3,720 a few hours later in its second consecutive day in red.
It jumped nearly 10 percent on Friday and compensated for its losses from the previous two days by closing again above $4,000 (at $4,064).
The weekend of May 15-16 started with another red candle. The ETH token formed the exact same candle but in the opposite direction to move below the previous uptrend line.
Then on Sunday, it once again reached the above-mentioned support line but managed to stabilize there after rebounding from the 21-day EMA.
The ether dropped as low as $3,100 on Monday morning and is currently hovering around the mentioned support.
Top 10 Movers
- Cardano
One of the most popular cryptocurrencies and a potential competitor to the Ethereum network, Cardano continued to move upwards during the previous week. The ADA/USDT pair added 30 percent to its value for the period and is now 59 percent up since breaking above the $1.35-$1.4 resistance two weeks ago. It registered a fresh new all-time high on Sunday, May 16 by touching $2.47, but then started falling down under the selling pressure that hit the entire cryptocurrency market.
ADA is in fighting XRP for the 4th spot on the Top 100 list, so the $2.5 mark remains the next big target in front of bulls.
Down, we see the old $1.4 resistance as a good zone of support.
Altcoin of the Week
Our Altcoin of the week is Kusama (KSM). The Polkadot blockchain test network grew by 20 percent for the last seven days and moved up to #36 on CoinGecko’s Top 100 list with a total market capitalization of approximately $5.3 billion. The coin is also 7900 percent up on a yearly basis.
The Kusama platform has seen a surge in interest in its native token this week as a result of the upcoming parachain auctions which will first take place on the test net then move further to Polkadot. Users will be able to participate by committing a portion of their KSM thus obtaining project tokens in return.
Parachains are basically sidechains that run in parallel to the Polkadot Relay (main) chain.
The KSM/USDT pair peaked at $622 on Saturday, May 15 and as of the time of writing is trading at $597 on Binance.
