Terra
Bitcoin price target now $29K, trader warns after Terra weathers $285M ‘FUD’ attack
Bitcoin (BTC) prepared for a rare bear feature to return on May 8 after an overnight sell-off took the market ever closer to January lows. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView BTC circles $34,400 lows Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD dipping to $34,200 on Bitstamp, recovering to trade around $500 higher at the time of writing. The pair had seen brief support around the $36,000 mark, but this gave way as thin weekend liquidity added to the volatility. Bitcoin liquidations themselves were limited, however, as market sentiment had long expected a deeper pullback after a tumultuous week on stock markets. Data from on-chain monitoring resource Coinglass countered 24-hour liquidations for both Bitcoin and Ether (ETH), running at aroun...
LUNA drops 20% in a day as whale dumps Terra’s UST stablecoin — selloff risks ahead?
Terra (LUNA) has plunged significantly after witnessing a FUD attack on its native stablecoin TerraUSD (UST). The LUNA/USD pair dropped 20% between May 7 and May 8, hitting $61, its worst level in three months, after a whale mass-dumped $285 million worth of UST. As a result of this selloff, UST briefly lost its U.S. dollar peg, falling to as low as $0.98. UST daily price chart. Source: TradingView Excessive LUNA supply LUNA serves as a collateral asset to maintain UST’s dollar peg, according to Terra’s elastic monetary policy. Therefore, when the value of UST is above $1, the Terra protocol incentivizes users to burn LUNA and mint UST. Conversely, when UST’s price drops below $1, the protocol rewards users for burning UST and minting LUNA. Therefore, during UST supp...
Anchor Protocol rebounds sharply after falling 70% in just two months — what’s next for ANC?
Anchor Protocol (ANC) returned to its bullish form this May after plunging by over 70% in the previous two months. Pullback risks ahead ANC’s price rebounded by a little over 42.50% between May 1 and May 6, reaching $2.26, its highest level in three weeks. Nonetheless, the token experienced a selloff on May 6 and May 7 after ramming into what appears to be a resistance confluence. That consists of a 50-day exponential moving average (50-day EMA; the red wave) and 0.786 Fib line of the Fibonacci retracement graph, drawn from the $1.32-swing low to the $5.82-swing high, as shown in the chart below. ANC/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView A continued pullback move could see ANC’s price plunging towards its rising trendline support, coinciding with the floor near&...
Ethereum risks 35% drop by June with ETH price confirming ‘ascending triangle’ fakeout
Ethereum’s native token Ether (ETH) faces the possibility of a 35% price correction in Q2 as it comes closer to breaking below its “ascending triangle” pattern. ETH price breakdown ahead? Ether’s price swung between profits and losses on May 2 while trading around $2,825, showing indecisiveness among traders about their next bias. Interestingly, the Ethereum token wobbled in the proximity of a rising trendline that constitutes an ascending triangle pattern in conjugation with a horizontal line resistance. To recap, ascending triangles are typically continuation patterns. That being said, Ether’s price was trending lower before forming its ascending triangle, raising its chances of a breakdown in the next few weeks. Another bearish sign comes from Ether&#...
Top 5 cryptocurrencies to watch this week: BTC, LUNA, NEAR, VET, GMT
The month of April has been a forgettable one for equities and cryptocurrency investors. Bitcoin (BTC) plummeted 17% in April to record its worst ever performance in the month of April. Similarly, the Nasdaq Composite plunged 13.3% in April, its worst monthly performance since October 2008. However, a major positive for crypto investors is that Bitcoin is still above its year-to-date low near $33,000. In comparison, the Nasdaq 100 has hit a new low for 2022 while the S&P 500 is just a whisker away from making a new year-to-date low. This suggests that Bitcoin has managed to avoid a major sell-off, indicating demand at lower levels. Crypto market data daily view. Source: Coin360 Along with Bitcoin, Ether (ETH) has also managed to sustain well above its year-to-date low. Accor...
Price analysis 4/29: BTC, ETH, BNB, SOL, LUNA, XRP, ADA, DOGE, AVAX, DOT
The U.S. dollar index (DXY) turned down from its 20-year high on April 29 but that has not changed the bearish price action seen in Bitcoin (BTC) and the U.S. equity markets. Equities remain under pressure and this week, Amazon stock saw its biggest intraday drop since 2014 after uncertainty over the U.S. Federal Reserve’s tightening measures placed investor sentiment back into choppy waters. If Bitcoin extends its correction, on-chain analysis platform Whalemap believes that the $25,000 to $27,000 zone may be the best place “to go all-in” on Bitcoin. Long-term investors do not appear to be panicking over the current weakness in Bitcoin and on-chain data from CryptoQuant shows that the combined BTC reserves of 21 crypto exchanges has plummeted to levels not seen since September 2...
Finance Redefined: Samson Mow’s DeFi question, Fireblocks expands to institutional and more
The week was filled with several new project developments and key updates from leading decentralized applications (DApps) and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. Fireblocks has expanded its institutional access to Terra’s DeFi ecosystem and Solana partnered with the Notifi network to improve the abysmal participation rates in governance votes. We will also look into the Cointelegraph research into the Terra ecosystem’s future and see if it can sustain the current growth. Samson Mow, the former executive at Blockstream, questions the decentralized aspect of the DeFi ecosystem. Top DeFi tokens saw another week of bearish price action despite several new developments and barring a few, the majority of the tokens in the top-100 registered double-digit losses over the past week. Fireblocks ...
Avalanche (AVAX) loses 30%+ in April, but its DeFi footprint leaves room to be bullish
Avalanche (AVAX) price is down more than 30% in April, but despite the negative price move, the smart contract platform remains a top contender for decentralized applications due to its scalability, low-cost transactions and its large footprint in the decentralized finance (DeFi) landscape. AVAX token/USD at FTX. Source: TradingView The network is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and unique in that it does not face the same operational bottlenecks of high transaction fees and network congestion. Avalanche was able to amass over $9 billion in total value locked (TVL) by offering a proof-of-stake (PoS) layer-1 scaling solution. This indicator is extremely relevant because it measures the deposits on the network’s smart contracts. For instance, the BNB Chain, running since S...
Fireblocks expands institutional access to Terra’s DeFi ecosystem
Fireblocks, a digital asset custody platform, announced that it has enabled institutional DeFi access to Terra (LUNA), the second-largest decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol by total value locked (TVL). As per the announcement, Fireblocks users can now securely access all the decentralized applications (DApps) built on the Terra blockchain. The launch is in response to Fireblocks’ Early Access Program users, who invested over $250 million into the Terra DeFi ecosystem within the first 72 hours of its integration going live. According to Michael Shaulov, CEO of Fireblocks, institutional demand for DeFi is only continuing to grow, adding that: “As their appetite expands, so will their desire to be able to access all of the latest and greatest innovations across different blockchain e...
Price analysis 4/22: BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP, SOL, ADA, LUNA, AVAX, DOGE, DOT
Bitcoin (BTC) turned down sharply on April 21, maintaining its tight correlation with the U.S. equity markets, which reversed direction after U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell hinted that a 50 basis point rate hike was “on the table” in May. The selling has continued on April 22 as investors trim risky assets in expectation of an aggressive stance from central banks to curb surging inflation. Veteran trader Peter Brandt said in a tweet recently that the Nasdaq 100 (NDX) was showing a formation similar to the one it had made before plunging in the year 2000. If history repeats itself then the NDX could witness a sharp correction. That may be negative for the crypto markets in the short term because of the close correlation between Bitcoin and the NDX. Daily cryptocurrency market...
Price analysis 4/18: BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP, SOL, ADA, LUNA, AVAX, DOGE, DOT
Bitcoin (BTC) and most major altcoins have started the new week on a soft note and the Crypto Fear and Greed Index has dropped into the “extreme fear” zone, suggesting that investors are still nervous. Bitcoin has declined about 17% year-to-date while the Nasdaq 100 has dropped about 16% during the same period, indicating a tight correlation between the two. In comparison, gold has risen more than 10% in 2022 and its 50-day correlation coefficient with Bitcoin “is around minus 0.4, the lowest since 2018,” according to journalist Colin Wu. Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 Although the crypto price action has remained bearish, the declining balance of Bitcoin on the crypto exchanges indicates that long-term investors are unperturbed and continue to accumulate at...
Terra’s UST flips BUSD to become third-largest stablecoin
The Terra (LUNA) blockchain’s algorithmic stablecoin Terra USD (UST) has flipped Binance USD (BUSD) to become the third-largest stablecoin on the market. UST is a USD-pegged stablecoin that was launched in September 2020. Its minting mechanism requires a user to burn a reserve asset such as LUNA to mint an equivalent amount of UST. According to Coingecko, UST’s total market capitalization has surged 15% over the past 30 days to sit at roughly $17.5 billion at the time of writing. The figure currently places UST as the third-largest stablecoin after it flipped BUSD with a slightly lower market cap of $17.46 billion. The asset now trailing only behind industry giants Tether (USDT) at $82.8 billion, and USD Coin (USDC) at $50 billion, however, the gap is quite substantial at this stage. The d...
