altcoin

Cardano ‘sharks’ scoop up 79.1 million ADA ahead of Vasil hard fork

ADA accumulation occurs despite a technical outlook threatening a 35% price crash by September 2022.

The decline in Cardano (ADA) price this year has prompted some of its richest investors to accumulate the token.

Cardano sharks in buying spree

Notably, addresses holding between 10,000 and 100,000 ADA, also called “sharks,” have added 79.1 million tokens (~ $37.7 million as of July 9) to their reserves since June 9, according to data from Santiment.

*Cardano shark addresses. Source: Santiment*

Meanwhile, Cardano “whales” that hold between 100,000 and 1 million ADA have stopped selling.

Holding a larger amount of ADA makes sharks and whales powerful enough to determine the token’s upcoming trends via increased volatility or decreased liquidity. Additionally, they can force “fishes,” or investors holding fewer ADA tokens, to copy their trades.

The recent buying spree among the Cardano sharks hints that they have been positioning themselves for a sharp price rebound, especially as ADA trades nearly 85% below its September 2021 record high of $3.16.

*ADA/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView*

Another potentially bullish catalyst is a major technical upgrade slated for the end of this month, following a successful testnet implementation on July 4.

Dubbed “Vasil,” the hard fork could allow faster block creation and improve scalability for Cardano’s decentralized application ecosystem. It will also introduce interoperability between Cardano’s sidechains.

ADA price “descending triangle” could spoil the party

Cardano’s supportive whales and sharks sentiment contrasts with technical indicators suggesting more pain ahead.

Notably, ADA’s price has been painting a “descending triangle” pattern since May 8. Descending triangles typically resolve after the price breaks out in the direction of their previous trend.

*ADA/USD daily price chart featuring ‘descending triangle’ setup. Source: TradingView*

Thus, the Cardano token could risk falling to as low as $0.31, as illustrated in the chart above.

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.

Cardano ‘sharks’ scoop up 79.1 million ADA ahead of Vasil hard fork

ADA accumulation occurs despite a technical outlook threatening a 35% price crash by September 2022.

The decline in Cardano (ADA) price this year has prompted some of its richest investors to accumulate the token.

Cardano sharks in buying spree

Notably, addresses holding between 10,000 and 100,000 ADA, also called sharks, have added 79.1 million tokens, $37.7 million as of July 9, to their reserves since June 9, according to data from Santiment.

Meanwhile, Cardano whales that hold between 100,000 and 1 million ADA have stopped selling.

Holding a larger amount of ADA makes sharks and whales powerful enough to determine the token’s upcoming trends via increased volatility or decreased liquidity. Additionally, they can force fishes, or investors holding fewer ADA tokens, to copy their trades.

Another potentially bullish catalyst is a major technical upgrade slated for the end of this month, following a successful testnet implementation on July 4.

Dubbed Vasil, the hard fork could allow faster block creation and improve scalability for Cardano’s decentralized application (DApp) ecosystem. It will also introduce interoperability between Cardano’s sidechains.

ADA price “descending triangle” could spoil the party

Cardano’s supportive whales and sharks sentiment contrasts with technical indicators suggesting more pain ahead.

Notably, ADA’s price has been painting a descending triangle pattern since May 8. Descending triangles typically resolve after the price breaks out in the direction of their previous trend.

Thus, the Cardano token could risk falling to as low as $0.31, as illustrated in the chart above.

Uniswap analysis: UNI price can double based on a classic technical pattern

UNI needs to break above a key technical resistance level to trigger its 100% bull run scenario. Otherwise, a bear flag awaits a 45% price crash.

Uniswap (UNI) market valuation could grow by 100% in the second half of 2022 as it paints a classic bearish reversal pattern.

UNI price bullish setup

Dubbed “inverse head and shoulders (IH&S),” the technical setup takes shape when the price forms three troughs in a row below a common support level (neckline), with the middle one (head) deeper than the other two (shoulders).

Additionally, it resolves after the price breaks above the support level.

The UNI price trend since May 23 checks all the boxes for forming an IH&S pattern, except the right shoulder. A retest of its neckline near $5.71 would form the right shoulder, increasing the possibility of an iH&S breakout scenario, as shown below.

*UNI/USD daily price chart featuring IH&S setup. Source: TradingView*

As a rule of technical analysis, the price breaking out of an IH&S structure can rally by as much as the maximum distance between its head’s lowest point and the neckline. So, UNI’s IH&S’s upside target comes to be around $9.78, up over 100% from June 2’s price.

Conflicting Uniswap price signals

Uniswap’s longer-timeframe charts bring attention to resistance levels that could keep UNI from touching their IH&S target.

That includes an interim resistance level of around $6 that has rejected UNI’s price lower at least thrice since May. A successful break above the $6-level could have UNI face the February 2022 support of around $7.52 whose test preceded a 75% price rally to $12.48.23.

The $7.52-level also coincides with UNI’s 20-week exponential moving average (20-week EMA; the green wave in the chart below), now near $7.90.

*UNI/USD 1-week candle chart. Source: Tradingview*

Conversely, a decisive pullback from the $6-resistance level could trigger a result in a bearish technical setup, dubbed as a “bear flag.”

UNI has already been returning lower after testing levels around $6, which coincides with the flag’s upper trendline. That leaves the UNI/USD pair two potential scenarios: decline toward the flag’s lower trendline near $3.92, or rebound for a potential breakout above the upper trendline.

*UNI/USD three-day price chart featuring ‘bear flag’ setup. Source: TradingView*

UNI’s move toward $3.92 would risk triggering the bear flag breakdown scenario, meaning a 45%-plus decline to $2.75 when measured from June 2’s price. On the other hand, a break above the upper trendline would invalidate the flag setup altogether.

SOL price trending toward yearly low as Solana TVL drops $870M in three days

DeFi contagion fears and bearish technicals mean additional downside pressure on Solana price.

Solana (SOL) tumbled on June 16 amid a broader retreat across the top cryptocurrencies, led by the Federal Reserve’s 0.75% interest rate hike a day before.

Solana price rebound fizzles

Notably, SOL/USD plunged nearly 17% to $30 a token, wiping out almost all the gains from the day before. The SOL price volatility liquidated almost $10 million worth of contracts in the past 24 hours across multiple crypto exchanges, data from Coinglass shows.

*SOL liquidation record since May 17. Source: Coinglass*

The latest declines come as an extension to SOL’s broader correction, where it dropped by more than 90% after peaking out near $267 in November 2021. SOL also fell to its lowest level since July 2021 near $25.

In addition, a higher interest rate environment and the collapse of high-profile crypto projects like Terra have strengthened SOL’s downside prospects.

SOL paints “ascending triangle”

Solana’s pullback move on June 16 began after testing a horizontal trendline resistance near $34 that constitutes what appears to be an “ascending triangle” pattern.

Ascending triangles are continuation patterns, i.e., they tend to send the price in the direction of their previous trend. As a rule, breaking out of a triangle pattern in a bearish market, for example, sends the price down by as much as the structure’s maximum height.

If SOL breaks below its ascending triangle’s lower trendline then the bearish profit target will come below $22.50, as shown in the chart below.

*SOL/USD four-hour price chart featuring “ascending triangle” pattern. Source: TradingView*

Solana’s downside target is about 25% below June 16’s price and could be achieved by the end of June. Nonetheless, if SOL bounces after testing the triangle’s lower trendline as support, it would eye the $34–$36 range as its interim upside target.

Massive SOL exit

Over 27 million Solana tokens have exited its smart contract ecosystem since June 13.

The total value locked (TVL) inside Solana smart contracts dropped to 74.65 million SOL (~$2.25 billion) on June 16, down 27% in the last three days, according to data tracked by DeFi Llama. That amounts to nearly $840 million of withdrawals from the ninth-largest blockchain ecosystem by market cap.

*Solana TVL performance since April 2021. Source: DeFi Llama*

Solend, a lending platform functioning atop the Solana ledger, witnessed a 26.5% decline in its TVL in the last three days and was holding 9.66 million SOL (~$290 million) as of June 16. Nevertheless, it remains the leading platform by TVL within the Solana ecosystem.

The outflows indicate that depositors do not want to keep their SOL locked in DeFi protocols, a sentiment common across the sector after Terra, an “algorithmic stablecoin” project, collapsed last month.

Contagion, another yield ponzi going down.

Seriously get your coins off anything like Celsius and BlockFi before they aren’t your coins anymore.

LFG, 3AC, Celcius etc all spread risk to each other and you pay the price for it https://t.co/cemFCvAeAz

— Pentoshi Powell Jr (@Pentosh1) June 16, 2022

Therefore, Solana’s path of least resistance remains skewed to the downside in the near term, particularly with no improvement in terms of macro and fundamentals.

Ethereum ‘double Doji’ pattern hints at a 50% ETH price rally by September

ETH’s bullish reversal candlesticks form near a strong support confluence, raising anticipations about a sharp upside retracement ahead.

Ethereum’s native token, Ether (ETH), looks poised to undergo a sharp upside retracement in the coming weeks after painting a so-called “double Doji” pattern, accompanied by a few bullish technical indicators.

Ether strong support confluence meets Dojis

To recap, a Doji is a candlestick that forms when a financial instrument opens and closes around the same level on a specified timeframe, be it hourly, daily or weekly. From a technical perspective, a Doji represents indecision in the market, meaning a balance of strength between bears and bulls.

So, if a market is trending downwards when a Doji appears, traditional analysts view it as a sign of slowing selling momentum. As a result, traders may look at a Doji as a sign to existing their short positions or open new long positions in anticipation of a price reversal.

Meanwhile, a double Doji shows a continued state of bias conflict among traders, which could result in the price breaking out in either direction.

With ETH/USD forming a similar pattern on its weekly chart, the token looks ready to log strong trend-defining moves in the coming sessions.

*ETH/USD weekly price chart featuring two Doji formations in a row. Source: TradingView*

Some of Ether’s technicals favor a decisive rebound move, beginning with its 200-week exponential moving average (200-day EMA; the blue wave in the chart above) near $1,625, which has served as a strong support level in May 2022.

Next, Ether gets another concrete price floor in the $1,500–$1,700 range, which was instrumental in capping the token’s bearish attempts between February and July 2021. Coupled with a double Doji, these technical indicators anticipate a price rebound ahead.

A 50% ETH rally ahead?

If ETH price rebounds as described above, then the next bullish target is the 0.5 Fib line (near 2,120) of the Fibonacci retracement graph, drawn from the $85-swing low to the $4,300-swing high.

*ETH/USD weekly price chart featuring Fib support and resistance targets. Source: TradingView*

That would mark a 20% upside move. Meanwhile, an extended move above the 0.5 Fib line could have traders eye the 0.382 Fib line near $2,700 as their next upside target, a level coinciding with ETH’s 50-week EMA (the red wave), by the end of September 2022.

This would be a nearly 50% price rally.

Conversely, if the double Doji pattern resolves in a breakdown below the support range, it could push Ether toward $1,400. This level coincides with ETH’s 2018 top and was instrumental as a support in February 2021, as shown below.

*ETH/USD weekly price chart. Source: TradingView*

A decisive breakdown below $1,400 then opens the door to the 0.786 Fib line near $1,000 as the next downside target.

Sold your SOL? Solana price eyes 35% jump as two technical signals flip bullish

Solana’s nearly 80% year-to-date decline is likely to follow up with some relief rallies, technicals suggest.

At least two technical indicators show Solana (SOL) could undergo a sharp price recovery in June, even after the SOL/USD pair’s 78.5% year-to-date decline.

SOL price nears bullish wedge breakout

First, Solana has been painting a “falling wedge” since May, confirmed by its fluctuations inside two descending, converging trendlines. Traditional analysts consider falling wedges as bullish reversal patterns, meaning they resolve after the price breaks above their upper trendlines.

As a rule of technical analysis, a falling wedge’s profit target is measured after adding the maximum distance between its upper and lower trendlines to the breakout point. So depending on SOL’s breakout level, its price would rise by roughly $20, as shown below.

*SOL/USD daily price chart featuring “rising wedge” breakout setup. Source: TradingView*

That puts the SOL’s price target at $58 if measured from the current price, or about 35% higher. But if the price retreats after testing the wedge’s upper trendline and continues to fluctuate inside its range, SOL’s profit target would keep getting lower.

The Solana token can rise to at least $44 after breaking out of its wedge pattern.

Bullish divergence

More upside cues for Solana come from a growing separation between its price and momentum trends.

In detail, SOL’s recent downside moves accompany an upside retracement in the readings of its daily relative price index (RSI), a momentum oscillator that detects an asset’s overbought (>70) and oversold (

*SOL/USD daily price chart featuring price-momentum divergence. Source: TradingView*

This situation, otherwise known as “bullish divergence,” shows that bears are losing control and that bulls would capture the market again.

Solana still faces bearish risks

Financial market veteran Tom Bulkowski believes falling wedges are poor bullish indicators, however, with a higher breakeven failure rate of 26%. Meanwhile, there is only a 64% chance that a falling wedge would meet its profit target, which leaves Solana with the possibility of continuing its downtrend.

Bulkowski asserts:

“The only variation that works well is a downward breakout in a bear market.”

Fundamentals around Solana agree with a downside outlook. They include a hawkish Federal Reserve and the negative impact of their tightening on riskier assets, including cryptos and equities.

As a result, SOL could move lower under the said macro risks, with its next potential downside target in the $19–$25 area, as shown below.

*SOL/USD weekly price chart. Source: TradingView*

This range was instrumental as support in the March–July 2021 session.

Avalanche price eyes 30% jump in June with AVAX’s classic bullish reversal pattern

But AVAX price is also forming a potential descending triangle that can spoil the upside chances.

Avalanche’s AVAX token shows signs of continuing its ongoing rebound move as it paints a classic bullish reversal pattern.

AVAX price to $35?

Dubbed a “double bottom,” the pattern appears when the price establishes a support level, rebounds, corrects after finding a resistance level, pulls back toward the previous support and bounces back toward the resistance level to pursue a breakout.

Since May 27, AVAX’s price trends appear like those typically witnessed during the double bottom formation. Specifically, the AVAX/USD pair on the four-hour chart has bounced twice after testing the same support level near $22.25 and now eyes a breakout above its resistance level — also called “neckline” — near $27.50.

*AVAX/USD four-hour price chart with “double bottom” setup. Source: TradingView*

If AVAX breaks above $27.50 decisively, and preferably in trading volumes, then the upside target would be at length equal to the maximum distance between the double bottom’s support and neckline levels.

That would put the Avalanche token en route toward $35, up 30% from June’s price.

Conflicting bearish scenario

AVAX currently trades almost 82% below its record peak of around $151, established in November 2021. During its correction, the AVAX/USD pair formed multiple consolidation channels but broke out of them to extend its downtrend further, which could spoil the bullish scenario outlined above.

Zooming out to the daily timeframe, AVAX has been consolidating inside a similar channel since May 2022, fluctuating between falling trendline resistance and horizontal trendline support. When placed together, these trendlines form a “descending triangle ,” which traditional analysts consider a continuation pattern.

*AVAX/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView*

Therefore, AVAX risks breaking out of the descending triangle in the coming days, with its bias skewed to the downside. Meanwhile, in a “perfect” scenario, the token will fall by as much as the descending triangle’s height, when measured from the breakout point.

That puts AVAX’s descending triangle near $13.25, almost 50% below June 6’s price.

Is Solana a ‘buy’ with SOL price at 10-month lows and down 85% from its peak?

SOL price still faces headwinds from its Bitcoin correlation, macro risks as well as Solana’s downtimes.

Solana’s (SOL) price dropped on June 3, bringing its net paper losses down to 85% seven months after topping out above $260.

SOL price fell by more than 6.5% intraday to $35.68, after failing to rebound with conviction from 10-month lows.

Now sitting on a historically significant support level, the SOL/USD pair could see an upside retracement in June, eyeing the $40-$45 area next, up around 25% from today’s price.

*SOL/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView*

60% SOL price decline ahead?

However, a rebound scenario is far from guaranteed and Solana faces headwinds from trading in lockstep with Bitcoin (BTC), the top cryptocurrency (by market cap) that typically influences trends across the top altcoins.

Notably, the weekly correlation coefficient between BTC and SOL was 0.92 as of June 4.

*SOL/USD versus BTC/USD correlation coefficient. Source: TradingView*

What’s more, Solana is likely to see even bigger losses than BTC if Bitcoin falls deeper below its current psychological support level of $30,000.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve looks determined to raise benchmark interest rates and reduce its balance sheet. As a result of this hawkish policy, riskier assets like Bitcoin have room to go lower, hurting Solana’s bullish prospects.

Breaking below SOL’s current support level—around $35—raises the chances for a decline toward the $18-25 range, which acted as a strong support area in March-July 2021, and preceded a 1,200% price rally, as shown below.

This bearish scenario would put SOL almost 60% below today’s price.

Solana network outages

The bearish outlook for SOL also comes as the Solana blockchain faces repeated outages, thus leaving its network practically unusable for its key “dapps,” including lending protocol Solend and decentralized exchange Serum, for hours.

Solana’s latest software glitch appeared on June 1 that shut down the network for 4.5 hours. The blockchain’s biggest outage happened in January and was down for almost 18 hours.

Validator operators successfully completed a cluster restart of Mainnet Beta at 9:00 PM UTC, following a roughly 4 and a half hour outage after the network failed to reach consensus. Network operators an dapps will continue to restore client services over the next several hours.

— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) June 1, 2022

The outages risk spooking investors to the benefit of Solana’s competition and have already coincided with several traders rotating their capital elsewhere.

Just sold all of my $SOL for $ADA. Solana is a great project but personally I cant in good faith continue to invest in a layer 1 that shuts down on a frequent basis (partial and major outages about 11 times).

#ADA #Cardano

— $Smac07_NFT$ (@Shawn_Deezy07) May 31, 2022

Miles Deutscher, an independent market analyst, believes crypto investors have become cautious after witnessing the recent Terra fiasco. Nonetheless, the analyst asserts that Solana’s outages would decrease over time as the network matures.

“But if they fail to stifle such events, then other L1s [layer-1 blockchains] will continue to eat away at its market share,” he noted.

8/ However, the reasons I like Solana still stand:

• Scales using a single global state (liquidity isn’t fragmented).
• Low cost and fast (despite handling the most transactions of any chain).
• 3rd most developed on chain (Electric Capital)
• Large list of VC backers

— Miles Deutscher (@milesdeutscher) June 2, 2022

Is Solana a ‘buy’ with SOL price at 10-month lows and down 85% from its peak?

SOL price still faces headwinds from its Bitcoin correlation, macro risks as well as Solana’s downtimes.

Solana’s (SOL) price dropped on June 3, bringing its net paper losses down to 85% seven months after topping out above $260.

SOL price fell by more than 6.5% intraday to $35.68, after failing to rebound with conviction from 10-month lows.

Now sitting on a historically significant support level, the SOL/USD pair could see an upside retracement in June, eyeing the $40-$45 area next, up around 25% from its June 4 price.

60% SOL price decline ahead?

Notably, the weekly correlation coefficient between BTC and SOL was 0.92 as of June 4.

What’s more, Solana is likely to see even bigger losses than BTC if Bitcoin falls deeper below its current psychological support level of $30,000.

Breaking below SOL’s current support level — around $35 — raises the chances for a decline toward the $18-25 range, which acted as a strong support area in March-July 2021, and preceded a 1,200% price rally, as shown below.

This bearish scenario would put SOL almost 60% below the price on June 4.

Solana network outages

Solana’s latest software glitch appeared on June 1 that shut down the network for 4.5 hours. The blockchain’s biggest outage happened in January and was down for almost 18 hours.

Validator operators successfully completed a cluster restart of Mainnet Beta at 9:00 PM UTC, following a roughly 4 and a half hour outage after the network failed to reach consensus. Network operators an dapps will continue to restore client services over the next several hours.

— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) June 1, 2022

The outages risk spooking investors to the benefit of Solana’s competition and have already coincided with several traders rotating their capital elsewhere.

Just sold all of my $SOL for $ADA. Solana is a great project but personally I cant in good faith continue to invest in a layer 1 that shuts down on a frequent basis (partial and major outages about 11 times).

#ADA #Cardano

— $Smac07_NFT$ (@Shawn_Deezy07) May 31, 2022

“But if they fail to stifle such events, then other L1s [layer-1 blockchains] will continue to eat away at its market share,” he noted.

8/ However, the reasons I like Solana still stand:

• Scales using a single global state (liquidity isn’t fragmented).
• Low cost and fast (despite handling the most transactions of any chain).
• 3rd most developed on chain (Electric Capital)
• Large list of VC backers

— Miles Deutscher (@milesdeutscher) June 2, 2022

Axie Infinity V-shape recovery fizzles as AXS price drops 20% from three-week high

Strong correlation with Bitcoin and traditional markets continue to pull Axie Infinity price lower.

Axie Infinity (AXS) price dropped sharply on June 1, suggesting that its supersonic gains in the last two days might have been a part of a bear market rally.

The AXS/USD pair soared 54% week-to-date to over $28 on May 31, its highest level in three weeks. But Axie Infinity price failed to hold the gains, correcting by more than 21% to $22 while raising the possibility of more downside to come.

*AXS/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView*

Trading behavior witnessed in the last 24 hours supported the downside outlook, with AXS/USD trading volume spiking during the selloff on May 31.

AXS price bear trend

Axie Infinity’s continued exposure to Bitcoin (BTC) and traditional stock markets was also instrumental in pushing its prices lower on June 1.

Notably, AXS’s correction in the said period coincided with Bitcoin’s move lower from around $32,250 to below $31,500 and with U.S. stocks resuming their downward trajectory after the Memorial Day holiday close on May 30.

*AXS/USD versus SPX versus BTC/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView*

Additionally, AXS’s price correction began near a confluence of technical resistances, containing a support-turned-resistance around the $27–$29 region and the 50-day exponential moving average (50-day EMA; the red wave in the chart below) around $29.

No V-shape recovery

If the pullback continues, AXS risks retesting its previous support line near $18.40, down about 20% from June 1’s price. Simultaneously, the persistent positive correlation with Bitcoin and stock markets could mean additional price declines below the $18.40-level.

“There’s no V-shaped bottom here,” argues Michael Antonelli, managing director and market strategist at Baird, noting that the factors that led to the decline across the risk assets in 2022— primarily the interest rate hikes—are going to stay the same in the coming quarters.

Meanwhile, independent market analyst PostyXBT believes that AXS must close above $40 to validate a long-term bullish rebound. Until then, the AXS/USD pair remains at risk of more downside to come.

“Play the relief bounces but don’t overstay your welcome,” PostyXBT told his 79,200 social media followers.