The crypto market never fails to surprise, yesterday being a prime example. After Monday’s sell-off, Bitcoin’s recent advance over $4,000 and Ethereum’s above $160 seemed a distant memory. Technical analysts have been scrambling to find support levels rather than areas of resistance. Against this background, Tuesday saw a sea of green and the early day rally extend into U.S. hours. BTC rallied from $3,700 to $3,870 and ETH from $124.75 to $138.90. In fact, almost anywhere you look there were gains.
Why the sudden change of sentiment? From a technical perspective, it seems that Binance Coin (BNB) has led the way and was in fact rallying when all else was heading south. The successful launch of its Binance Launchpad has seen two very successful ICOs which has the market thinking BNB could mimic the price action of ETH during the height of ICOs in late 2017 and early 2018. Also, there was some fundamental news. Starbucks announced a significant stake in the upcoming Baakt crypto platform. As you may remember, Baakt is looking to launch physically backed BTC futures pending regulatory approval. Starbucks will look to install Baakt’s payment software in its stores, allowing for your favorite latte to be purchased via cryptocurrency. The digital assets will then be converted immediately to fiat. There is nothing like a meaningful real-world adoption to put a smile on a crypto trader's face.
Technical Analysis
We originally thought we would be looking for a chart demonstrating more doom and gloom today. Technical trading can often be a little cumbersome during periods of high volatility and requires a strong degree of discipline as sentiment changes rapidly.
Probably the least volatile of the major coins is BTC. While many other major coins broke lines of support and retracements, our market leader actually behaved (technically) pretty well. $3,660 was the level that needed to hold and so it did. Now looking at the hourly chart below, while we still remain in the broad range, a rally over $3,900 could see an acceleration in momentum.