Cryptocurrency markets ended the week on a high yesterday, with 99.5% of coins in the green, led by Ethereum’s 11% rise over twenty-four hours. Bitcoin saw a $100 move up to $3,725, while Bitcoin Cash posted a 5% increase – the other biggest mover in the top 10. Alt coins in general saw a nice relief rally, with ARK posting a 70% increase before dropping down and WAX jumping 66% before falling back.
Apart from Ethereum, which spent Sunday steadily climbing, all the moves happened late on Sunday after a largely uneventful weekend and set the week up for some potential volatility, reinforcing some opinions that the bottom is in.
Market just spiked and we’re at 24.5B daily volume….on a Sunday night. Surprised how many >10k accounts are flat and posting bearish charts, hilarious. The time to be bearish is end of month imo. $ETH $BTC
— Crypto Mikey (@CryptoCX1) February 18, 2019
Full Steam Ahead for Constantinople
Ethereum’s headline-grabbing increase was notable because of its steady, progressive manner throughout Sunday, as opposed to the sharp ‘Bart’ jump that typifies artificial, or ‘bot’, trading. These Bart moves, both up and down, usually have no catalyst and are just attempts at quick profit making from algorithmic trading software. Such moves were endemic in the summer of 2018 and were visible again in many of the alt pumps on Sunday where no catalysts applied. Ethereum’s price action however was markedly different, being based around the upcoming Constantinople upgrade, and its gradual increase the day was clear evidence of people buying up in advance of the event. The same price action was seen with BNB and TRX tokens in advance of the BTT token sale.
$ETH
Pretty straightforward.
This thing is clearly rounding out on top of a supply zone if you ask me.
Maximum financial opportunity incoming.
Waiting for a setup at the box boundary & will be overjoyed if I get one.
Pretty decent R:R and high strike-rate trade. pic.twitter.com/1buuCbPes3— DonAlt (@CryptoDonAlt) November 19, 2018
Most of the community reacted with understandable joy at the move, but one group who presumably weren’t as thrilled were the Substratum team. They admitted two months ago that they were shorting ETH to $60 with their ICO funds. Ethereum’s move therefore comes at the worst possible time for them, following their de-listing from Binance last week.
Is Alt-Season Coming?
Predictions of an ‘alt season’ have been coming thick and fast on crypto Twitter in recent days. Ethereum’s pump may well lead to the kind of price action we haven’t seen in months, especially given that it was the highest daily volume on the coin in over a year. This shows that money is certainly still keen to enter the market and that an appetite for risk is increasing.
As long as Bitcoin doesn’t make any drastic moves down it might be time to dust off your USDT (or the stablecoin of your choosing) and start looking around for some juicy, highly compressed setups.
People can deny it all they want, but the signs of an incoming altseason are evident in the charts.
— Nik Patel (@cointradernik) February 10, 2019
