The year starts with a new record, that of Bitcoin’s hashrate, but it doesn’t seem to affect the price. For the first time in its 11-year history (tomorrow is the anniversary of the genesis block), reaches 119,353,780 Th/s confirming how Bitcoin’s network is increasingly stronger and more secure against any external attack. The increase in hashrate equals greater reliability of the network. But this is not reflected in Bitcoin’s price trend.
After 48 hours from the beginning of 2020, there are no particular price movements. There is a prevalence of red signs but nothing worrying. Among the deepest declines of the day, in the top 40 with most capitalisation, there’s only Synthetix Network Token (SNX), which falls by 3%.
In the last 48 hours since the start of the new year, the only green signs are those of Tezos (XTZ) that tries to climb the slope after the sinkings of the last few weeks with an increase of 1%, preceded by Basic Attention Token (BAT) that since midnight on January 1st gains more than 2% and returns to test the resistance of 19 cents, already tested on December 30th, the maximum level of the last month. With the descent that began at the turn of November 30th and December 1st, the break of 19 cents on December 18th marked the minimum of the last six months at 15 cents. From those lows, there was a reaction of more than 30%.
The best of the day is Seele (SEELE), which rose by 10% and confirms the trend that has characterised it throughout 2019: Seele was the best of 2019 with a four-figure increase and confirms its performance in the early days of 2020.
The first three cryptocurrencies are all in negative territory with losses of about 1%. It is curious to note that Ripple’s trading volumes are collapsing. In these hours, XRP is the tenth crypto for volumes with lower values than other altcoins with lower capitalisation, such as Ethereum Classic (ETC), Litecoin (LTC), TRON (TRX), EOS (EOS) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
This prevalence of uncertainty brings the market cap back to $190 billion with Bitcoin dominance remaining stable just below 69%, close to the highest levels of the last 2 years. Ethereum recorded a slight rebound, recovering 7.5%, while the dominance of Ripple remains unchanged at 4.3%.
Bitcoin (BTC)
In recent hours, Bitcoin has returned to test the $7,100 threshold, support that since last mid-December has rejected any short-term retracement. The technical picture of Bitcoin in the medium term after the lows of December 18th still shows uncertainty and a lack of direction in a context that sees the trend of the semester still within a bearish trend.
It is necessary for Bitcoin to confirm the holding of $7,000-7,100, otherwise, risks would open up for a sinking in the $6,800-6,600 area.
Ethereum (ETH)
After trying to break the $135 quota last December 29th, Ethereum returned below the $130 threshold, showing a lack of strength.
Ethereum has completed in these hours another hard fork, Muir Glacier, one month after the Istanbul hard fork last December 7th. This additional fork was activated at block no. 9,200,000 yesterday, January 1st, 2020. With this EIP2384 implementation, the activation is delayed to 611 days, which increases the difficulty of extracting a new block. This is an update of the blockchain protocol towards Ethereum 2.0.
This hard fork, as it happened with Istanbul, is not affecting the exchanges on Ether. Prices are below $130 and from a technical point of view, there are no relevant indications to give a bullish turn signal that would only come back to $135.
For Ethereum it is necessary not to go back below $120 in the next few days in order not to risk attracting bearish speculation that could break the December 18th lows below $115.
