Following yesterday’s price jump in the markets, most cryptocurrencies have drifted lower today, with Ethereum plunging over 6% due to its highly-anticipated Constantinople hard fork being delayed.
Most cryptocurrencies are still trading up from their weekly lows despite today’s downwards move, and most analysts still see positive price action being right around the corner.
Bitcoin Drops 2%, Ethereum Drops Over 6%
Yesterday, the markets surged allowing most cryptocurrencies to regain much of the losses they incurred over a volatile weekend trading session that left many altcoins sitting at their weekly lows.
Bitcoin (BTC) has now dropped slightly over a 24-hour trading period and is currently trading down 2.2% at its current price of $3,625. Yesterday, Bitcoin traded around $3,700 for most of the day, from which it is has only drifted down slightly.
Bitcoin is continuing to respect the $3,500 region as a level of support, which is the bottom of its recently established trading range between $3,550 and $4,200. This existence of this range, which was first proposed by Mati Greenspan – the senior market analyst at eToro – last week, was validated by Bitcoin’s recent price jump after it touched $3,550.
“As we've been discussing since mid-November, the current range is from $3,000 to $5,000... It seems now, that bitcoin has opened a new mini-range within that from $3,550 to approximately $4,200,” Greenspan noted in an email last week.
Ethereum (ETH) is one of the worst performing cryptocurrencies today and is trading down over 6% at its current price of $120.84. ETH dropped after news broke that its highly-anticipated Constantinople hard fork, which was originally scheduled to occur tomorrow, was delayed due to the discovery of a security flaw in the new network code.
Despite this, in the long-term analysts still believe Constantinople will be bullish as it will reduce the supply of new ETH by 33%, which could provide increased stability and growth for Ethereum’s price.
Trading Room, a popular cryptocurrency analyst group on Twitter, noted that Ethereum could be nearing a good buy zone below $122. They further noted that ETH could surge to highs in the low-$200 region if it is able to break above resistance levels that currently exist around $165.
“I don’t know about bottom, but I am okay to buy 111-122 area #ETH with stops below 98 for potential target of 222-233… Offcourse [sic] we need to break above 165-172 but I do expect a break sooner than later,” they explained.
Altcoins Drift Lower
The current market volatility has caused most major altcoins to drift lower today.
At the time of writing, XRP is trading down 2% at its current price of $0.327, up from its weekly lows of $0.317.
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has dropped significantly today and is currently trading down 4% at $128.8. Although BCH is having a rough day, it is currently up from its weekly lows of $124 which were set this past weekend.
Stellar (XLM) has also dropped today and is currently trading down 3% at its current price of $0.106.