Ethereum has finally awoken from its slumber, smashing resistance, and surging to a five-month high over the last few hours. The big question now is: what has driven the momentum and how far will ETH go?
Ethereum is currently one of the top-performing high capitalization crypto assets with a surge of 11.5% on the day to reach a five-month high of $270.
ETH on a Tear
The move was initiated a few hours ago following weeks oscillating between $225 and $245. A minor pullback has occurred as trading begins in Asia, bringing prices back to around $262 at the time of writing.
ETH/USD. Source: TradingView
The last time Ethereum prices were up here was in late February when most altcoins found their peaks so far for 2020. ETH has yet to reach its top for the year, though, which was around $285. However, if this momentum can continue, it won’t be long.
The move has not been missed by crypto analysts such as on-chain analytics provider, Santiment, which has been monitoring exchange inflows.
“More than 135,000 $ETH (~$35.2M) have moved to exchanges in the past 12 hours, as it looks like the #Ethereum ranging has finally come to an end.”
ETH Moved to Exchanges. Source: Santiment
Santiment added that it has been the highest single-day exchange inflow since June 5th, and a correction is likely to follow.
The next major resistance level is that previous high from February, which, if broken, will mark a new higher high and the beginning of a major uptrend. After that, prices need to break the 2019 high of $360 to confirm the longer-term bull run. Ethereum has pretty much been in slumber for two full years.
Ethereum Fundamentals
It is unlikely that DeFi has been the cause of the Ethereum spike since markets have been booming in the nascent industry for a couple of months now while ETH has remained flat.
The real reason for the momentum is likely to be the confirmation of the final public testnet for ETH 2.0, which will be launched early next month. Ethhub founder, Anthony Sassano, was excited about the news;
“The “official” eth2 phase 0 public testnet (codenamed ‘Medalla’) will go live on August 4th. If all goes well, this will be the final testnet before mainnet launch. It’s finally happening!!”
Medalla is the latest of multiple prior tests of ETH 2.0 code that began in April with the genesis block. Investors are clearly incentivized by this development, and hopes are renewed that Ethereum 2.0 on mainnet may arrive before the end of the year.
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