Tanya Abrosimova
Independent Analyst
- Bad timing of a new hard fork may increase pressure on Ethereum.
- ETH/USD reversed the best part of the weekend gains.
Ethereum (ETH), the second-largest digital asset with the current market value of $14.5 billion, has reversed the best part of its weekend gains to trade at $131.90 at the time of writing. ETH/USD has lost over 2.5% in recent 24 hours and stayed unchanged since the beginning of the day.
Bad fork timing
The Ethereum team will activate Muir Glacial hard fork on January 1 or 2. The update is needed tp to delay the so-called difficulty bomb another 4 million blocks, and it will take place on block 9,200,000.
However, the industry players say that the timing of the fork activation is terrible. According to the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) at Blockstream Samson Mow, January 1 is not a good time for a hard fork as many network participants are not ready for it.
Glad that everyone is ready for the Ethereum hard-fork on New Year’s Day
Also, he noted that Istanbul had been activated only recently; thus, the decision to launch another update so soon looked like the Ethereum Foundation team tried to patch some issues.
Currently, only 65.8% of the network is ready for the update. Binance, Bittrex and Bitso confirmed that they would support the fork, while Coinmase, Kraken, Bithumb, Huobi and Bitfines are net to inform about their stance.
ETH/USD: technical picture
ETH/USD hit the low at $116.4 on December 18 Monday and managed to recover to $138.00 by December 29; however, the further recovery seems to be limited as the coin retreated below $132.00 by the time of writing.
Once $138.00 is out of the way, the price is likely to retest psychological $140.00. The critical resistance is created by the upper line of the daily Bollinger Band at $16.50 and SMA50 (Simple Moving Average) daily at $148.00.
On the downside, the local support is created by $130.00. This area is reinforced by SMA100 4-hour. The next support comes at a psychological $128.50 (SMA50 4-hour). Once it is out of the way, the sell-off is likely to be extended towards $125.00.
ETH/USD daily chart
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