If this past weekend is any indication of the current bull market cycle, then an altcoin season may be well underway.
Similar to previous cycles, after (BTC) makes a significant run-up in price and then enters a consolidation period, funds begin to migrate into large and small market cap altcoins.
WRX/USDT, WIN/USDT, BTT/USDT, STX/USDT and HOT/USDT 4-hour chart. Source:TradingView
Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that while Bitcoin traded in a range between $57,000 and $60,200 over the past week, multiple altcoins saw double-digit gains as exchange listings and protocol developments brought a new wave of enthusiasm and trading volume for select projects.
Tron ecosystem leads the altcoin rally
Tokens in the Tron (TRX) ecosystem saw a noticeable uptick in their trading volumes over the past 2 days with the gambling-focused WINk token experiencing the biggest growth as it surged 325% from $0.00059 on April 3 to a new all-time high of $0.0025 on April 5.
WIN/USDT 4-hour chart. Source:TradingView
BitTorrent (BTT) also saw an influx of buying beginning on April 4 which lifted the price more than 100% from a low of $0.0067 to a new record high of $0.0136 on April 5. The price of TRX grew by 48% during the same period, climbing from $0.0997 to its current price near $0.147.
It wasn’t just Tron-based projects that caught traders’ attention over the weekend and on Monday.
The India-based crypto exchange WazirX saw its native (WRX) token grow by more than 350% over the past two days, catapulting from a low of $1.47 to a new all-time high of $5.88 on Monday thanks to a record 2 billion in trading volume.
WRX/USDT 4-hour chart. Source:TradingView
Holochain (HOT), a decentralized peer-to-peer platform for dApps, has seen its price rally 350% since the March 25 announcement that Holo Limited was granted a US patent for its rrDHT networking innovations. Since the announcement, HOT rallied from $0.21 to $0.31.
A new listing on Upbit Global also sparked a 150% rally in the price of Stacks (STX) as it moved from $1.13 on Sunday to an intraday high of $2.85 on April before profit-taking dropped the price down to $2.20.
Bitcoin gathers strength for its next run-up
According to analysis from Jarvis Labs co-founder Ben Lilly, on-chain metrics indicate a solid base of support for Bitcoin’s price with the only headwinds coming as a result of volatility in funding rates “as soon as there is any sort of pump.”
BTC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source:TradingView
Due to this reaction, Lilly sees a possible retest of the $54,000 level to “grind away some of the FOMO” still found at that level but he doesn’t see the price dropping any lower due to solid on-chain support at this level.
Lilly said:
“Either way, we are setting up for a strong later half for April and beyond especially with the Grayscale Effect kicking in around that time.”
At the time of writing, BTC is trading at a price of $59,200 with the Bitcoin dominance rate at 55.7%.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
On March 30 PayPal president and CEO Dan Schulman told Reuters that the online payment giant will allow its U.S. consumers to pay with cryptocurrencies when they transact with millions of its global merchants. This is a major step in the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies.
Crypto market data daily view. Source:Coin360
In other news, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange plans to launch a new Micro Bitcoin (BTC) futures contract on May 3, which will enable investors to precisely hedge their Bitcoin risk. This also means that smaller investors who could not trade the existing Bitcoin contract because of its 5 Bitcoin requirement may be able to dive into derivatives as the Micro futures start at 0.1 BTC.
While Bitcoin hogs the limelight, there are several tokens that have been making strong moves in the background. Let’s see the performance of three such tokens.
HOT/USDT
Holochain HOT token was featured on Cointelegraph on Feb. 25 when the price was at $0.0030. Since then, the token has skyrocketed to an intraday high at $0.0206 today, a gain of 586% in just over a month.
The latest leg of the rally was triggered by March 25 announcement that Holo Limited was granted a U.S. patent for the rrDHT networking innovations within Holochain. According to the firm, “this patent represents an easy way to represent complex distributed data models, and manage them with high resilience.”
Holo clarified in a blog post that the patent was filed to prevent trolls from filing patents on this innovation and also to protect the “rights of the users to have sovereignty over their data.” While this is a positive step, only time will tell if Holochain can offer a reliable alternative to blockchain technology.
VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for HOT on March 26, prior to the start of the rally.
The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historic and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.
VORTECS™ Score (green) vs.HOT price. Source:Cointelegraph Markets Pro
As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for HOT flipped green on March 26, just hours before the start of the rally.
The VORTECS™ Score again turned green on March 29, just as the rally was getting started. During this time HOT surged from $0.0116 on March 29 to a high at $0.0197 on March 30.
The price rose from a low at $0.0067 on March 25 to an intraday high of $0.0206, a 207% rally in six days. This shows the uptrend is backed by strong momentum. However, the pace of the rise has pushed the relative strength index to extremely overbought levels, increasing the possibility of a minor correction or consolidation in the next few days.
HOT/USDT daily chart. Source:TradingView
In strong uptrends, the bulls generally buy every minor dip. The first support on the downside is the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level at $0.0153. If the price rebounds off this support, it will indicate strength. The bulls will then try to resume the uptrend by pushing the price above $0.0206.
If they succeed, the HOT/USDT pair could start the next leg of the uptrend that may reach $0.0289 and then $0.0308.
Conversely, if the bears sink the price below the 50% retracement level at $0.0136, the correction could deepen to the 61.8% retracement at $0.0120. Usually, such a deep correction delays the start of the next leg of the up-move.
OGN/USDT
Origin Protocol (OGN) started off with a focus on the sharing economy but the project has expanded into building applications for peer-to-peer commerce and decentralized finance.
Origin released its official “Litepaper” on March 17, and the document details how the Origin NFT launchpad will allow users to build their own marketplace with custom landing pages and dynamic auction formats.
The protocol claimed to have successfully auctioned the world’s first tokenized album by Electronic music producer 3LAU and the sale generated $11.6 million in 24 hours. Origin also tweeted an NFT drop on Origin’s NFT Launchpad by Grammy Award-Winning Multi-Platinum Musician Lupe Fiasco that will go live on April 12.
In an AMA session with Binance China, Origin’s co-founder Matthew Liu said the protocol plans to include NFT drops and bonuses for OGN holders in the future.
In addition to NFTs, the protocol is planning to develop payment apps and launch an Origin USD debit card.
The launch of OGN staking on Binance from March 4 and the recent inclusion of OGN as a collateral asset on Cream Finance could also be attracting investors to the project.
OGN price has been on a tear in the past few days. It went from $0.75 on March 25 to an intraday high at $2.36 today, clocking a 214% return in less than a week. However, traders seem to be in a profit-booking mode today as seen from the long wick on the day’s candlestick.
OGN/USDT daily chart. Source:TradingView
If the profit-booking continues tomorrow, the OGN/USDT pair could drop to the 50% Fibonacci retracement level at $1.55. This is an important support because a bounce off it will suggest the sentiment remains bullish and traders are accumulating on dips.
A breakout and close above $2.36 could start the next leg of the up-move that may reach $3.16 and then $3.35.
On the contrary, if the selling intensifies and breaks the $1.55 support, the pair could drop to the 61.8% retracement level at $1.36. A rebound off this support may keep the pair range-bound for a few days before the start of the next trending move.
WAN/USDT
On March 30 Wanchain announced that the State Grid Corporation of China had selected its blockchain technology for upgrading thei national data management system. This opens a plethora of opportunities for the future.
Before this announcement, Wanchain was attracting attention for its recent addition of interoperability features. Wanchain’s decentralized bridges connecting several blockchain networks to support cross-chain transfers. Wanchain also released a new version of its cross-chain mechanism on Feb. 26, which allows sharing of wanBridge assets in a unified collateral pool, boosting cross-chain capacity.
Wanchain founder and CEO Jack Lu tweeted on March 9 that he had successfully sent the first-ever Bitcoin to Ethereum transaction using the decentralized BTC to ETH direct bridge. That was followed by the announcement that the team would test XRP’s cross-chain compatibility with Wanchain and Ethereum on March 29.
To reduce the impact of high network fees, Wanchain announced that it will reduce the gas fees needed to move assets cross-chain to Ethereum by 33% in order to bring some relief to users.
Wan surged from $1.09 on March 26 to an intraday high at $2.30 today, a 111% rally within five days. Traders seem to be booking profits after the rally today as seen from the long wick on the day’s candlestick.
WAN/USDT daily chart. Source:TradingView
The first support on the downside is the previous resistance at $1.67. If the bulls can flip this level to support, it will suggest strength. The buyers will then try to push the price above $2.30. If they succeed, the next target to watch on the upside is $2.88.
However, if the bears sink the price below $1.67, the WAN/USDT pair could extend its fall to $1.40. A bounce off this level could keep the pair range-bound for a few days before the start of the next trending move.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
On March 25, concerns surrounding the record-breaking $6.1 billion (BTC) options expiry this Friday sparked an overnight sell-off that dropped Bitcoin price to $50,400.
The downturn was not a surprise for many traders and some called for a possible test of the $47,000 support level. Despite Bitcoin’s loss of bullish momentum, several derivatives indicators, including a bullish futures premium and a neutral skew, suggest that the price may not drop below $50,000.
BTC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source:TradingView
While technical indicators paint a mixed picture of Bitcoin’s short-term price action, the asset retains strong fundamentals today media reported that sovereign wealth funds have begun inquiring about opening positions in BTC. This points to growing global adoption for BTC and the cryptocurrency sector as a whole as new Ether (ETH) trusts are also being established to serve institutional investors.
Analysts suggest the market is oversold
Glassnode co-founder and CTO Rafael Schultze-Kraft recently highlighted a possible dip lower based on low realized price distribution between $51,100 and $54,000.
Not much #Bitcoin realized between here and $51k. Would not be surprised if we dipped a bit more.
Strongest on-chain support currently at $47,400.https://t.co/3GFPTQPp6F pic.twitter.com/NLBQvEIGfB
— Rafael Schultze-Kraft (@n3ocortex) March 22, 2021
In a follow-up tweet after Thursday’s drop, Schultze-Kraft reaffirmed that the dip was “not unexpected” and in his view, the overall outlook remains bullish.
Schultze-Kraft said:
“Structurally, nothing has changed. I have yet to see a data point that points long-term bearish.”
Further evidence of a possible turnaround in the near-term can be found when looking at Bitcoin’s liquid supply change, which decreased by the largest amount in more than 6 months.
Bitcoin liquid supply change. Source:Glassnode
This suggests that a large number of BTC have been pulled out of the circulating supply and deposited into longer-term storage wallets as bulls prepare for the price to trend higher.
Altcoins sink lower
A majority of the altcoins were hit hard by the Bitcoin sell-off as traders across the market exited positions in an attempt to hold on to their recent gains.
The one stand-out among altcoins is Aragon (ANT), whose recent pivot toward DeFi and nonfungible tokens has helped to spark a 50% rally to $13.56.
Holochain (HOT) and Balancer (BAL) have also managed to put up a positive gain of 5.2% and 6.4% respectively.
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $1.62 trillion and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 59.4%.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
Bitcoin’s (BTC) strong bull run and the immense popularity of the decentralized finance space have attracted several new investors to cryptocurrencies. A report from Crypto.com shows a massive increase in crypto users as the figure rose from 66 million in May 2020 to 106 million by January this year.
Crypto market data daily view. Source:Coin360
Contrary to the popular notion that new crypto users are mostly speculating on the price, data from Unchained Capital shows that investors who bought in the past three to five years are still holding and are not yet tempted to book profits.
Unlike the 2017 bull market where many low-cap altcoins rallied, the current bull trend has rewarded projects with strong fundamentals. Let’s have a look at three such tokens and also analyze their charts.
HOT/USD
Holochain (HOT) aims to provide the solution for the scalability problems which may be a limiting factor in the crypto sector. Holochain wants to give control of data and privacy back to the people, eliminating large corporations and middlemen.
To achieve that, Holo, a distributed peer-to-peer hosting platform, acts as the link between the web and the Holochain apps. Holochain wants to make this technology available to users who can access the apps in a web browser. If this needs to be done, the technology must have vast scalability, fast speeds, and it should also be financially viable. The team at Holochain believes they are on the path to achieving this goal.
As part of the process, Holochain launched an app called Elemental Chat that runs on HoloPorts. The team is also planning to enable web users to log into Elemental Chat through the HoloPort. This will put the protocol’s scalability claims to the test and help to further fine-tune the project.
The team has also outlined the progress on the upcoming milestones of the Holo suite of products that will be progressively released in the future. If the team delivers on its promises, the protocol may attract investor attention.
HOT surged from $0.0007817 on Feb. 8 to an intraday high at $0.00424 on Feb. 21, a 442% rally within two weeks. This up-move had pushed the relative strength index (RSI) above 92 on Feb. 21, indicating the market was extremely overbought in the short term.
HOT/USDT daily chart. Source:TradingView
That resulted in profit-booking on Feb. 22 and 23, which pulled the price down to the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level at $0.0021028. But the positive sign is that the long tail on the candlesticks on both days showed strong buying at lower levels.
However, traders who are stuck at higher levels are dumping their positions on rallies, as seen from the long wick on the Feb. 24 candlestick.
After the large intraday range of the past few days, the HOT/USD pair has formed an inside day candlestick pattern today, indicating a balance between supply and demand. The pair may now consolidate for a few days.
If the bulls can push the price above $0.00363, a retest of $0.00424 is possible. A breakout of this level could start the next leg of the up-move that may reach $0.0055629.
Conversely, if the bears sink the price below $0.0028, the pair may drop to the 20-day exponential moving average ($0.0020).
ORN/USD
As the decentralized finance space grows, many new projects are being announced on a regular basis. It becomes difficult for investors to keep track of all of them. Hence, a liquidity aggregator that connects to several decentralized and centralized exchanges in order to swap pools and provide access from a single platform may be sought after and this is what the Orion protocol (ORN) aims to do.
The protocol plans to offer its investor’s a variety of revenue streams. The Orion Liquidity Boost Plugin offers increased liquidity to its partners and has already onboarded Polkastarter and many other blockchain projects.
Orion’s Launchpad Liquidity has partnered with DAO Marker and DuckDAO, which will enable projects launch incubated projects on the launchpad’s own platform
Orion recently launched the staking calculator, allowing ORN token holders to calculate the staking rewards and attain APY’s of up to 38%.
After launching the first phase of the Orion Terminal’s mainnet on Dec. 15, the team plans to add several features like derivatives, leveraged ETFs, contract trading, NFTs, lending, margin trading and staking of any digital asset by 2021.
As more products are launched, the revenue is likely to increase and that may benefit ORN token holders.
ORN has been in a strong bull run this year. It rallied from $4.3014 on Feb. 8 to an intraday high at $15.20 today, a 253% rally in just over two weeks. As a result, the RSI has surged to above 91 levels, indicating the possibility of a short-term fall or a range-bound trading action.
ORN/USDT daily chart. Source:TradingView
The bears tried to stall the rally on Feb. 22 and Feb. 23, but the long tail and the positive closes of each day show that the bulls purchased the dips and resumed the rally.
However, today it looks as if traders booked profits and a retest of the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level at $11.4379 is possible.
If the ORN/USD pair rises from this support level, it will indicate strong demand at lower levels. That could result in a retest of $15.20 and a breakout of this resistance may propel the pair to $20.
On the other hand, a break below $10.2759 could pull the price down to the 20-day EMA ($8.21). Such a deep fall could delay the next leg of the up-move.
DODO/USD
The DeFi space has been attracting investor attention in the past few months. However, the growing popularity has clogged the Ethereum network gas fees have soared to unsustainable levels. Therefore, traders are searching for options that are on competing networks and charge fewer fees. Binance Smart Chain has been one of the major beneficiaries of this trend.
DODO is a decentralized exchange that uses the Proactive Market Maker (PMM) algorithm, which the team claims is better than automated market makers. DODO offers several features such as trading, aggregation, initial DEX offerings, and mining.
DODO introduced Crowdpooling in January, and this feature aims to provide equal opportunity to investors by addressing the biggest issues being faced by new projects. If successful, Crowdpooling will help prevent frontrunning, insufficient liquidity, and the high costs associated with attracting liquidity. The first phase of the DODO V2 Beta crowdfunding pool called ‘ShuttleOne’ was a huge success as it was oversubscribed by 173 times.
DODO token was listed on Binance on Feb. 19 following the DODO V2 Public Beta launch on the Ethereum Mainnet and Binance Smart Chain on Feb. 22. There are also several incentive programs available on BSC.
DODO price rallied from an intraday low at $2.788 to an intraday high at $10 on Feb. 19. The token had strong listing gains but since then, the price has been in a corrective phase.
DODO/USD 4-hour chart. Source:TradingView
The bulls attempted to start a rebound off $3.50 on Feb. 23, but the bears continue to sell on minor rallies, indicating a negative sentiment. However, a minor positive is that the bulls have been defending the $4.50 level for some time.
If the price turns up from the current level and breaks above $5.660, the DODO/USD pair may rise to $7.50. This level is likely to act as a stiff resistance but if crossed, the pair could rally to $8.75 and then retest $10. The next leg of the uptrend may resume above this level.
Conversely, if the bears sink the price below $4.50, a drop to $3.50 is possible. The selling could intensify if the $3.50 to $2.788 support cracks.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
