Ethereum market update: ETH/USD retreats from the recent high, Constantinople updated re-scheduled once again

Ethereum is again the second largest cryptocurrency with the market value of $12.7B. The coin has gained nearly 3% in recent 24 hours and touched $126.44 before retreating to $121,21 by press time. 

Meanwhile, Ethereum developers changed the date of Constantinople updated once again. Now the launch is scheduled on February 25 instead of earlier announced February 27. Once the update is deployed, the miners' reward will be reduced from 3 to 2 ETH per block, while the “difficulty bomb” will be defused until the next year.

“Got a vague countdown … Constantinople will activate on Monday 2019-02-25 11:54:02 UTC. Current average block time is 16.89 seconds. 91597 blocks to go (7188403/7280000),” Afri Schoedon, the hard fork co-ordinator of Ethereum commented on Reddit.

Ethereum’s technical picture

Looking technically, the local intraday support comes at $120.00. Once it is cleared, the downside may be extended towards $116.60, created by SMA100 (4-chart). A sustainable move lower will bring the congestion zone under $112.00 back in focus. It is strengthened by the upper boundary of the recently broken channel and SMA50 (4-hour).

On the upside, we need to see a clear move above $124.00 (the upper line of Bollinger Band on 1-hour chart and 23.6% Fibo retracement daily) to retest the recent high at $126.44, which looks less likely at this stage considering the downward-looking RSI.