Bitcoin puts $40,000 back in focus as attention is on Cardano

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Sharecast News | 18 Jan, 2022

Bitcoin and other main altcoins fell on Tuesday, with the exception of Cardano, which maintained its upward momentum after reaching the highest levels since the end of December. The world's leading cryptocurrency decided to ignore the positive signals coming from the options market and touched almost one-week lows on Monday, below $42,000, leading some analysts to believe that a new fall towards $40,000 is in the offing. Total capitalization is barely over $2 trillion.

For the time being, Bitcoin remains trading above the $42,000 mark, encapsulated in the recent price range, with clear resistance in the $44,500 - $45,000 area, while Ethereum has slipped below the $3,200 levels. Trading volumes remain low and trading was light, largely due to the US holiday, as investors look for signs that Bitcoin's downward spiral has reached an end point.

"Bitcoin continues to look vulnerable having failed to bounce back strongly off the recent lows. It appeared to be gathering some upside momentum at times last week but it quickly ran into resistance just shy of $45,000 where it had previously seen support," commented Craig Erlam, analyst at Oanda. "All eyes are now on $40,000 and whether we're going to see another run at that major support level," he warned.

The selling pressure from large holders, that had slackened since last week, seems to have regained some momentum despite the fact that the upcoming options expiration on January 28th could serve as a "possible trigger" to send Bitcoin towards $50,000. However, numerous voices warn that market conditions are leaning toward further declines and, at best, the price action will remain "dull" and consolidating.

CARDANO, THE GREEN OASIS

Market watchers are paying attention to Cardano, whose price remains in the green and is up as much as 40% over the past week on Monday, when it touched $1.59, highs since late December. The next target is the psychological resistance of $1.60.

Several events explain this new interest from investors in the fifth currency by market capitalization. Its trading volume is on par with that of the Ethereum network. Messari data show that Cardano's 24-hour transaction volume was $5.31 billion, compared to Ethereum's $5.59 billion. However, Cardano's gas fees - payments made by users to offset the computing power needed to process transactions - were about $75,400, compared with $44 million for Ethereum in that period.

Last week, Cardano (ADA) also won a poll published by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin asking which alternative to Ether - the Ethereum network's native unit - could end up becoming the world's dominant cryptocurrency by 2035.

Likewise, the latest ADA-related news concerns the official announcement of the launch of Pavia, Cardano's non-fungible token (NFT) metaverse and token set project, through a widely circulated press release titled: "Metaverse comes to the Cardano blockchain."

The official launch date of the first decentralized exchange platform on the Cardano network called Sundaeswap has been made public, announced this past January 15th, where they assure that the beta version will be fully functional by January 20th, 2022, as well as the release announced that projects will be able to create pools starting from Tuesday, January 18th.

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