BTC/USD

Bitcoin closed the previous week at $6778, successfully making its escape from the almighty $6200-6600 corridor. The bulls finally made a breakthrough and continued their run on Monday touching $6900 and suggesting an attack of the psychological level of $7000.

Even the bad news coming from China could not stop bulls from defending their newly conquered territory. Baidu, China’s leading search engine joined Alibaba and Tencent, distancing itself from cryptocurrencies amid China’s crackdown. Baidu moved to censor crypto discussions on its online forums.

The gains were extended on Tuesday when the BTC/USD pair reached $7100 for the first time since the beginning of the month.

Surpassing the key resistance at 7k was crucial for the short-term recovery of Bitcoin and on August 28, the volume of BTC surpassed $4.5 billion and the volume of the crypto market recovered to $12 billion.

On Tuesday it was also reported that Atlas, a popular Brazilian cryptocurrency investment platform, has been hacked. Although the company claims users’ funds are safe, the personal information of over 264,000 of its customers has been leaked. This, however, did not affect price of BTC and it closed its second green day, this time above 7k.

Today morning both the RSI and the Stochastic indicator have entered their respective overbought areas, which could mean a potential bearish correction (possibly to $6877 or the interim support at $6632). Bounce back from that level (if the drop actually occurs) would mean another run above 7k, towards the $7100-$7200 tough resistance

Next mid-term target will be the resistance line at $7300-$7400 range.

At the time of writing BTC sits at $6992 with 24-hour trading volume of $5,9b. The biggest cryptocurrency is up 8.3% since last Wednesday and 12% for last two weeks.

The good thing is volume continues to increase with the recovery in the volume most probably fueled by optimistic developments in Japan and South Korea, as UPbit and Bithumb, South Korea’s two largest cryptocurrency exchanges, have resumed normal operations after being involved in a few scandals.

What we need currently is a third consecutive green candle and successful break (and defend) of the 7100/7200 resistance line. This will open the door for an attack of the mid 7000s and 8k.

ETH/USD

ETH started the week out of the danger zone ($250-$270) and closed the day above its short-term resistance line of $280.

The biggest altcoin extended its gains on Tuesday almost touching the psychological level of $300 without breaking it tough. ETH is looking to take advantage of the BTC bull run and make an escape after a week range bound between $270-280.

An even tougher resistance is waiting at $318 and this one was holding well 10 days ago when it was last tested.

A break below $270 would mean entering the danger zone in another attempt for bears to break the September 2017 low of $250.

Ethereum now sits at $288 at the time of writing with 24-hour trading volume of $2.5b up with 2.6% since last Wednesday.

Price activity and low volume (also confirmed by the RSI indicator on the graph) for ETH may possibly be explained by a combination of a strong dollar and a high rate of inflation used to incentivize miner activity: annual ETH inflation currently sits at 7.2%, about two times that of Bitcoin, and provides miners with large amounts of ETH that are then market sold to cover cost.

Ethereum is the hosting blockchain for a lot of new projects and ICOs and most of them fund themselves through selling their own tokens to the public for ETH. Once the massacre started, they just dropped the bags fearing of further price decrease which of course pushed the ETH/USD price even lower.

For recent updates you can check my Blockdelta profile or follow me on Twitter – @FutureBchain

Please check out my BlockDelta profile for full contact details.