IOTA price analysis: IOT/USD hampered below $0.30 as Europol detains massive IOTA theft

IOTA, now the 13th largest digital asset with a market value of $824M, had an unhappy start of the year losing nearly 20% of its value since the 1st of January. The coin is changing hands at $0.2978, mostly unchanged on a day-over-day basis. 

Meanwhile, Europol has released information that the international police had arrested a suspect behind $11.4M worth of IOTA coins theft.  According to the investigation reports, the hacker created and promoted a  malicious seed-generator iotaseed.io to get assess to the wallets of IOTA owners who used his service. 

IOTA’s technical picture

IOT/USD needs to return above psychological $0.30 handle to improve its short-term technical picture. However, sustainable growth is hardly possible as long as the coin stays under DMA50 (currently at $0.3131). Once a viable move above the said level will unleash its bullish potential and set the stage for further recovery towards $0.3245 (the lower border of the previous range, and to $0.3343 (January 19 high).

On the downside, the initial support zone is seen at $0.2920-$0.2890. It includes the lowest level of the previous day ($0.2913) and the recent low ($0.2890). Once below, the sell-off may be extended towards $0.2720, which is low the lowest level of 2019.
 

IOT/USD,  4-hour chart