The most anticipated event for the crypto industry in April 2024 will be the Bitcoin halving.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin decreased in price by 2.74% from March 29 to April 5, 2024. If at the beginning of the week the first cryptocurrency was still trying to stay above $71,500, then in the second half BTC dropped to $64,500, which was the minimum over the past ten days.

The situation was marked by the minimum supply of the largest cryptocurrency on exchanges in three years. Analytics platform CryptoQuant recorded an outflow of 90,700 BTC over the past month.

Banks began to directly contact Bitcoin miners. According to the CEO of the mining company HUT 8, Asher Genoot, this practice will become commonplace in the near future.

Another analytical platform, Glassnode, presented a weekly report, according to which an interesting trend was noticed: the discrepancy between the supply of long-term and short-term investors is narrowing. This is explained by the increase in the price of BTC in mid-March and late April, which pushed large players to partially take profits.

From a technical analysis perspective, Bitcoin is in a wide range between the $73,794 resistance level and the $60,760 support level. The overall trend remains bullish asthe price is above the 50-day moving average (in blue) and the RSI indicator is above 50.

The Fear and Greed Index remained unchanged compared to last week. Its value is 79. This still indicates extreme greed among Bitcoin investors.

Ethereum

Ether dropped by 7.5% over the past week. The largest drop occurred in one trading session, on Tuesday, when ETH immediately fell by 6.46%. The second largest cryptocurrency by capitalization failed to stay above $3,600. ETH is currently trading around $3,250.

Despite the decline in the value of the coin, Ethereum is doing quite well. Last week, a report from analytics company Coin98 was published, according to which a number of ETH metrics increased significantly in the first quarter of 2024. For example, fee-only income increased to $1.17 billion, up 155% from 2023 over the same period. The number of daily active users on the network increased to 404,000, as well as the daily transaction rate to 1.18 million.

Some movement has finally begun regarding spot Ether ETFs. Securities and Exchange CommissionThe US (SEC) announced a three-week period during which it will respond to applications from Fidelity, Bitwise and Grayscale Investments.

From the point of view of technical analysis, the correction continues for ether. For the second largest cryptocurrency by capitalization, it will be important to stay above the support level of $3,059. The dominance of bears is indicated by the fact that the price has fallen below the 50-day moving average (indicated in blue). In addition, the RSI indicator is decreasing: it is already below 50. A change in trend can be expected after overcoming the resistance level of $3,679.8.

Bitcoin Cash

Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash is growing in price. The growth for the week was slightly less than 10%. On April 1, the BCH rate exceeded $700 for the first time since November 2021. Despite the increase in cost, the number of negative sessions turned out to be more than positive ones: four versus three.

The main event of the week for Bitcoin Cash is the second halving in the history of this cryptocurrency. Now the reward to miners for mining a block is 3.125 BCH. The first occurred on April 8, 2020. Then the reward was reduced from 12.5 BCH to 6.25 BCH. By and large, it was after the halving that Bitcoin Cash began to grow again. From April 1 to April 3, the rate decreased at some point even by 19.5%.

It’s worth noting: this week the Bitcoin Cash team announced an upcoming update in mid-May. The Bitcoin fork upgrade will be based on the concept of an adaptive block size limit. It is expected that there will be an algorithm whereby the BCH block size will be set based on the average size of the latest blocks. The main goals are stated to be minimizing exposure to spam attacks and reducing transaction costs. 

From a technical analysis perspective, Bitcoin Cash remains in an uptrend. This is confirmed by indicators: the price is above the 50-day moving average (marked in blue), RSI is above 50. Support and resistance levels: $562.8 and $718.87, respectively.