Ethereum price analysis: ETH/USD stays above $300, further upside is limited

Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency with the current market capitalization of $32.6 billion, has grown by nearly 5ˆ in recent 24 hours to become one of the best-performing coins out of top-10. A move above $300 handle emboldened the bulls and pushed the price towards resistance $310, where new selling orders popped in. At the time of writing, ETH/USD is changing hands at $304, moving within the range with a bearish bias.

What's going on

Ethereum developers plan to make ETH issuance ten times lower by 2021, according to the timeline, provided by Justin Drake, an Ethereum 2.0 researcher at the Ethereum Foundation 

"January 2020: beacon chain launch. June 2020: eth2 light clients production-ready. November 2020: eth1 fork #1 to have its fork choice rule honor eth2 finality (conservatively, no issuance reduced). March 2021: eth1 fork #2 to reduce issuance by 10x," he said as cited by Trustnodes.

While the dates are not 100% accurate as there are a lot of factors that may influence and slow down the process, the reduction of issuance might serve as a bullish factor for the coin in the long run.

Ethereum's price analysis

The initial support for ETH/USD is created by SMA100 (Simple Moving Average) on 4-hour chart currently at $302.00. It is closely followed by psychological $300 and a confluence SMA50 and a middle line of 4-hour Bollinger Band at $293. Once this cluster is cleared, the sell-off may gain traction with the next focus on $279.30 (SMA200 4-hour coupled with the lower edge of 4-hour Bollinger Band).

On the upside, a sustainable move above $310 is needed for the recovery to gain traction. The next strong resistance comes at  $332.00 (the upper edge of 1-day Bollinger Band). A move above this area will signal that the downside correction is over. 

ETH/USD, 4-hour chart