Ethereum
The cost of ether for the week from May 17 to May 24 increased by 20%. Most of the growth occurred on Monday, May 20, when the second largest cryptocurrency by capitalization immediately added 19.25%. At the end of seven days, ether reached its highest price levels in two months.
Source: tradingview.com
Despite all the skepticism, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) immediately approved
eight applications to exchange-traded ether funds from different companies. The list included almost the same players in the American stock market that applied for spot Bitcoin ETFs: VanEck, Fidelity, Franklin, Grayscale, Bitwise, ARK Invest and 21Shares, Invesco and Galaxy and BlackRock.
All new crypto funds will be listed on three American exchanges: Nasdaq, NYSE Arca and Cboe BZX Exchange. The approval process has actually just begun and will be completed once all representatives of all ETFs have cleared Form S-1 (filled out by publicly traded companies) with the SEC.
At the same time, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin presented a roadmap for the development of the project. After the March 2024 Dencun update, which introduced blobs into blocks, the next steps in the development path should be The Verge and The Spurge. The main feature of the first will be the introduction of Verkle trees. The innovation will reduce the cost of maintaining a node, reduce the amount of data stored, and also increase the gas limit for the first level tenfold, which, the developers believe, will potentially result in cheaper transactions. The goal is to improve the efficiency of the Ethereum virtual machine (EMV). This is planned to be achieved by removing a number of functions, for example, the operation code
SELFDESTRUCT.
From the point of view of technical analysis, the situation has changed: now bulls rule the roost among Ethereum investors. This is supported by indicator readings: the price has risen above the 50-day moving average (marked in blue), and the RSI is above 50. If the trend continues, then in the near future we can expect the price of ether to rise to the resistance levels of $4,095.4 (2024 maximum) and $4,868.8 (historical high). The support level is $3,355.
Source: tradingview.com
Bitcoin
The price of Bitcoin from May 17 to May 24, 2024 remained almost unchanged. It is worth noting that at the maximum over the past seven days, BTC was worth almost $72,000. However, four consecutive trading sessions negated the growth from the beginning of the week.
Source: tradingview.com
The main source of positivity for Bitcoin at the beginning of the week was the anticipation of the finalization of the issue of spot ether-ETFs. In addition, their own exchange-traded funds did not disappoint. On May 23, it became known that BTC-ETFs held a record 850,000 BTC. The largest holders:
Grayscale fund with $20 billion and the BlackRock fund with $19.6 billion.
On Wednesday, May 22, Bitcoin Pizza Day took place. The conditional holiday is timed to coincide with the purchase by American programmer Laszlo Hanyecz of two Papa John's pizzas for 10,000 BTC. At the exchange rate as of May 24, the simple lunch cost $660 million. Some large crypto exchanges held a number of special competitions to mark the 14th anniversary of the high-profile purchase.
From the perspective of technical analysis, bulls predominate among Bitcoin investors. The first cryptocurrency by capitalization is trading above the 50-day moving average (marked in blue). Volatility has been falling for more than a month, as evidenced by the decrease in the ATR indicator. Support and resistance levels: $65,513 and $73,794 respectively.
Source: tradingview.com
Index
fear and greed has not changed compared to last week. Its value is still 74, which indicates the predominance of greed over fear among Bitcoin investors.
Avalanche
The value of the Avalanche cryptocurrency has increased by a little more than 3.5% over the past seven days. Most of the week passed in the red zone. The growth is explained by one successful trading session on Monday, May 20, when the cryptocurrency immediately grew by almost 13%.
Source: tradingview.com
Although Avalanche is not experiencing rapid growth, the news for the project is quite positive. Last week, the largest American crypto exchange Coinbase announced that AVA staking will be available to clients. The annual yield will be 4.47%. Thus, Coinbase is trying to expand its dominant position in the market. Choice
in favor Avalanche is explained by the fact that this cryptocurrency is widely known (ranks 11th in terms of capitalization), and can also boast of the speed of the blockchain (the number of transactions per second reaches 4,500, while Bitcoin has only 7).
Ava Labs itself announced
cooperation with the Gamestarter Web3 gaming ecosystem. During the interaction, GameChain will be built, a first-level platform for creating games on the blockchain. A secure, open and efficient ecosystem for gaming transactions is promised. There are already more than 50 projects
ready to launch on GameChain.
From the point of view of technical analysis, the situation for AVA is ambiguous. Last week, Avalanche managed to rise above $41.5 for the first time since April 12. However, it was not possible to stay higher. Moreover, the price dropped below the resistance level of $39.9. The situation can rather be interpreted as a “bull trap”.
It is worth noting the situation with indicators. Avalanche's price appears to be above its 50-day moving average (in blue), but there is almost a death cross on the chart. This is a situation when a fast moving average crosses a slow moving average from top to bottom. The latter is the 200-day moving average (indicated in orange). Support and resistance levels: $29.5 and $39.5, respectively.
Source: tradingview.com
Conclusion
The first half of the week, from May 17 to 24, passed under the green flag for cryptocurrencies, but the second half was under the red flag. The approval of spot ETFs for ether, expected by crypto investors, did not lead to an increase in quotations. However, it is too early to panic. If we recall a similar situation with exchange-traded funds for Bitcoin, then at first the cryptocurrencies also became cheaper, but after some time they began to rise in price.
This material and the information contained herein do not constitute individual or other investment advice. The opinion of the editors may not coincide with the opinions of the author, analytical portals and experts.
Source: Bits
I am an experienced journalist, writer, and editor with a passion for finance and business news. I have been working in the journalism field for over 6 years, covering a variety of topics from finance to technology. As an author at World Stock Market, I specialize in finance business-related topics.
