4h/1d/1w ETHUSD - Room to run? (less TA, more narrative)

2023년 4월 14일

TL;DR? Skip to the conclusion


Intro: I’m brand new to TA, so bear with me everyone. In this article, I’m trying to flesh out where ETH moves from here, as it is in the process of breaking out of major resistance zone(s). General consensus seems to be ~2300 for the next “major” resistance. History often tends to repeat itself (or at least rhyme) — 2 years ago, ETH (and BTC) experienced comparable January - April breakouts before ETH went ballistic in the second half of the month. A similar move seems possible now. Things have changed a lot over the past few years, following the implementation of EIP 1559 (which implemented the current “Burn” mechanism that manages the ETH supply, which was approved by the core devs in Q1 of 2021 and successfully implemented in the London hard fork on August 5, 2021). For those who care deeply about tokenomics (as you should), it’s worth noting that ETH has been deflationary for some time now. Vitalik identified 121Million as the likely peak of ETH supply some time back, and that has held true. I’m writing this post within a few days of the final major technical challenge the Ethereum network faced, enabling POS withdrawals with the Shapella hard fork (which was correctly identified as a 'buy the news' event, given the predominance of liquid staking derivatives and that the average cost of staked ETH is around 1940-2000). 



(4H: green dashed lines): ETH had been trading inside an ascending channel on the 4 hour chart since November 9 — however, it broke through that channel with a decisive break above 1940-2000 yesterday, April 13. For the past 12+ hours, it has been consolidating above 2100. So, time for a new channel with a longer time frame, right?

(1D - yellow dotted lines): Zooming out, ETH broke above the upper Bollinger Band ($1350+) around July 15-17, then retraced to ~1430 around August 28, had a dead-cat bounce over the first half of September. The trend that formed over the second half of September and throughout October formed the resistance line of the upper channel on the 4H chart, which seems like a natural place to draw the lower support of a new channel on the daily chart. The upper channel can be drawn from the initial breakout above the upper Bollinger Band (around July 15-17), which places resistance at the current price levels. I used the same trend lines, starting at other local tops from Q3 of 2022, as possible higher bounds of a channel we would enter if we do maintain support above 2100 USD.

In the short term: If the price maintains support at its current levels, we can confirm the breakout from the 4 hour ascending channel, which would suggest a continued push to 2300-2350 (or even as high as ~2750 as the next significant resistance level(s). However, if the price drops below 2100, then a further fall to support in the 1900-2000 range seems likely.

(1W - intermediate- to long-term “megaphone” projection): 
This is where things get … weird. However, for all of the reasons above, I do not expect a significant retrace below $1940. How high can ETH go over the next few weeks to months? For this, I simply drew a megaphone projection line from the first week of January in 2021 up through the peak in May 2021. which captured the local bottom in July 2021, and copy/pasted it to 2023. ETH’s price is very close to where it was at this time in April of 2021, and the ETH/BTC ratio is starting to climb, much as it did when BTC hit its local top around April 15 of 2021, while ETH went bonkers for the next few weeks.

Could something similar happen now? If ETH blows through the resistance levels I’ve identified, as well as the psychological resistance level of $3000, over the next few weeks, a further climb up to ~$4000 seems possible. However, given that POS deposits were just enabled back in Q4 2020, and liquid staking derivatives had not yet been developed, the liquid supply of ETH was far lower in April-May of 2021 than it is now.

Conclusion:
At the time of publishing, ETH is flirting with the 2100 support, having just dropped below it and is trading in the 2090s. If it loses this support and drops below 2090, a drop to approximately 1940-2000 seems likely. However, if it holds through the weekend, then a further run up to approximately 2300-2700 seems imminent, and breaking through $3000 over the next month or so seems well within the realm of possibility. This would all closely mirror ETH’s price movements from 2 years ago. Due to increased liquidity in the ETH supply, I do not expect the price to move as dramatically as as it did in 2021 — but, if the unlocking of staked ETH continues to go off without a hitch, it is also possible that “the institutions are coming” and demand for ultrasound.money (reference for ETH burn since EIP-1559 went live) will outpace any profit-taking that might happen during a continued bull market.