Article Summary
– The cryptocurrency market posted a bearish performance in April 2023, with a decline in market capitalization for both Bitcoin and altcoins.
– Bitcoin experienced a marginally bullish performance in April, starting and ending the month at $28,478.48 and $29,268.81, respectively.
– Avalanche’s AVAX and Ethereum’s Ether are two cryptocurrencies investors should watch out for in May 2023.Avalanche is introducing new institutional deployments to improve the blockchain environment, while the Shapella hard fork on Ethereum has enabled validators to withdraw their staked Ether from the Beacon Chain.
The cryptocurrency space in the month of April saw a bearish performance, ending four consecutive months of gains and a bearish start to the second quarter of the year.While the market started the month of April bullish, with Bitcoin trading over the $30,000 mark for the first time in six months, the last two weeks of April saw a market decline that ultimately saw it post its first bearish performance of the year 2023.
The flagship cryptocurrency asset, Bitcoin, posted a marginally bullish performance as the rest of the market followed in its trend.It began trading at $28,478.48 at the beginning of the month and ultimately ended the month at $29,268.81, representing a 2.78% gain.
The cryptocurrency market capitalization in the month of April lost 0.84% for the month, from $1.19 trillion at the start of the month to end the month at $1.18 trillion.The cryptocurrency market capitalization traded as high as $1.29 trillion during the month.
The altcoin market experienced similar bearishness, losing 1.13% in April from approximately $634.7 billion to currently stand at $627.50 billion at the end of the month.During the month, we saw the altcoin market capitalization trade as high as $700 billion.
Despite the current bearish trend seen in the market, here is a look at 5 cryptocurrencies investors should watch out for in May 2023:
Bitcoin’s BTC
Bitcoin traders are closely monitoring the cryptocurrency’s price at the beginning of the new month, with the price hovering around $29,000.The market is currently experiencing a bearish trend, and traders are hoping for a positive outcome for the month of May 2023.
However, the situation remains uncertain, and it remains to be seen whether Bitcoin will experience a bull run or continue to decline.
Traders are cautiously optimistic and are keeping a close eye on the market in the coming days.
A new report by K33 Research reveals that the cryptocurrency market is losing momentum with the recent crash in Bitcoin’s price over the past two weeks.It is important to remember that, as with any investment market, the crypto market is not immune to volatility and fluctuations.
On April 23rd, 2023, the crypto market experienced a significant dip in prices, with Bitcoin, the largest and most well-known cryptocurrency, dropping by 10%.
Various factors may have contributed to this recent downturn, including increased government regulations, with the passing of the MiCA regulation in Europe and crackdowns seen in the U.S.After a large sell-off on April 19, BTC slumped lower before stabilizing at $27k.
Analyst and writer Marcel Pechman discusses whether Bitcoin’s $28,000 support has a chance, and he explained that leverage was used to push Bitcoin’s price close to $30,000 on April 27 and that leverage also played a key role in the subsequent decline to $28,000.
He concluded that bears were not confident enough to add leveraged short positions, so bulls should not yet throw in the towel as margin and futures indicators remain healthy.
Pechman reinforces that a dip down to $26,000 is possible, but data shows sellers are not willing to bet on such a move.
Bitcoin ended the month’s trading at $29,268.81.
Avalanche’s AVAX
This is a layer one blockchain that functions as a platform for decentralized applications and custom blockchain networks.It is one of Ethereum’s rivals, aiming to unseat Ethereum as the most popular blockchain for smart contracts.It aims to do so by having a higher transaction output of up to 6,500 transactions per second while not compromising scalability.
Ava Labs, the developer of the Avalanche layer-1 blockchain platform, is introducing new institutional deployments to improve the blockchain environment.On April 6, Ava Labs introduced Avalanche Evergreen Subnets, a suite of institutional blockchain tooling and customizations designed to address company-specific requirements for financial services.
The new product aims to allow institutions to maintain control over their blockchain environment while enabling inter-company communication.Ava Labs’ institutional business development director, Morgan Krupetsky, explained,
– “Currently, many institutions are building use cases on enterprise blockchains such as Corda, Hyperledger, Quorum or R3, which inherently are not interoperable and rely on third-party bridges.
– ” With Evergreen subnets, member institutions will be able to communicate with each other without relying on third-party bridges, seamlessly transferring assets, and proceeding with trade confirmations and other messages.
Avalanche Foundation director Emin Gün Sirer believes that subnets are the next big thing for blockchain after smart contracts.
According to the executive, they enable functions only possible with “network-level control and open experimentation.”
AVAX ended the month trading at $17.17.
Ethereum’s Ether
In April, the Shapella hard fork was officially executed on the Ethereum mainnet, meaning that Ethereum validators can finally withdraw their staked ether from the Beacon Chain.The long-awaited upgrade took effect on April 12 at epoch number 194,048.
Within the first hour of the hard fork, a total of 12,859 ETH was unlocked in 4,333 withdrawals, according to Ethereum block explorer beaconchai.in.Currently, around 44% of validators, or 248,043 of the total active 559,549, can request a partial or full withdrawal.
The majority of withdrawals at this time range between 2.8 and 3.2 ETH, which suggests that it’s mostly staking rewards that are being withdrawn at this time.
However, the share of Ether held by whale addresses has dropped since Ethereum’s Shapella upgrade, suggesting that large investors may be leaning bearish in the near term.
The amount of Ether held by addresses with 1,000–10,000 ETH, or “whales,” was over 14.033 million ETH on May 1, according to Glassnode data.
In comparison, the count was 14.167 million ETH on April 12, when Shapella went live on Ethereum.Interestingly, a week before the Shapella upgrade, the Ether Whale cohort held 14.303 million ETH, the highest amount in 2023.
Ether’s price is down over 3.5% since the Shapella upgrade, suggesting that several whales may indeed have “sold the news.” Interestingly, other address cohorts also showed a decline, including sharks (100–1,000 ETH), fish (10–100 ETH), crabs (1–10 ETH), and even mega-whales (10,000+ ETH).
Only shrimp (<1 ETH) accumulated during the period, with their net position slightly increasing from 1.79 million ETH on April 12 to 1.80 million ETH on May 1. The $2,000 level is an important psychological resistance level for ETH/USD that bulls have been unable to break despite multiple attempts in 2023.On the daily chart, ETH/USD holds above the short-term support provided by its 50-day exponential moving average (EMA), near $1,840.A successful rebound from here opens $2,000–$2,125 as the next upside target range in the second quarter. Ether ended the month trading at $1,876.92. XRP The more than 2-year legal feud between the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and blockchain payments firm, Ripple Labs Inc is likely coming to an end very soon, as there are indications of a scheduled meeting between the duo next week. According to unconfirmed sources, the meeting will take place secretly on May 8. The current rumors have it that the plan is to enter into a settlement negotiation that can potentially bring an end to the current lawsuit the commission filed back in December 2020.While the update has sparked a lot of dissenting views, the prospects of an impending settlement have further helped re-energize the XRP community. Prior to this recent update, the broader crypto ecosystem had been anticipating the summary judgment from Judge Torres, who has been presiding over the case.Based on the precedent and the facts of the case thus far, analysts have been speculating that the chances the blockchain payments firm will come out triumphant in the legal battle are high. In fact, there is recent information that shows the SEC has a relatively poor success rate in cases that Judge Torres has presided over. With the much-anticipated summary judgment delayed yet again, the rumors of the meeting have further conditioned the minds of many keen observers that a settlement might truly be underway. XRP ended the month’s trading at $0.4723. Pepe’s PEPE PEPE is a deflationary memecoin launched on Ethereum. The cryptocurrency was created as a tribute to the Pepe the Frog internet meme, created by Matt Furie, which gained popularity in the early 2000s. The project aims to capitalize on the popularity of meme coins, like Shiba Inu and Dogecoin and strives to establish itself as one of the top meme-based cryptocurrencies.PEPE appeals to the cryptocurrency community by instituting a no-tax policy, a redistributive system rewarding long-term stakes, and a burning mechanism to maintain the scarcity of the PEPE coin. Pepe Coin entered the market on April 16, 2023, without any prior sale and with minimal fanfare.The project’s website reveals that the token has no designated team, and its creators have opted to remain anonymous. This approach might seem unconventional to some, but it is not unheard of in the cryptocurrency world, where numerous projects are initiated by anonymous entities. With a surge of 2,100% since its issuance last month, Pepe’s market cap has skyrocketed to $502 million.According to the Ethereum block explorer Etherscan, around 75,000 holders own Pepe, with numerous wallets (except centralized exchanges) containing over $5 million worth of the tokens. Over the weekend, the Pepe token surged by 350%, with some traders getting massive returns on their trades. However, the PEPE price dropped to $0.00000089, down about 35% from its record high of $0.00000138.As a result of the correction, its market capitalization slipped by nearly $80 million, thus pushing it out of the top 100 cryptocurrency index. It is also important to note that PEPE’s daily trading volumes declined across centralized (CEX) and decentralized (DEX) exchanges as prices fell. The same happened to the Google trends for the keyword “Pepe Coin,” whose score is down from 100 to 7 in a day, suggesting that the retail hype has subsided in the past 48 hours. PEPE has rallied without any concrete fundamentals behind it, and the evidence of fewer whales controlling the uptrend could negate the gains in the short term. For instance, the four-hour chart shows that PEPE/USDT has formed higher highs, but its relative strength index (RSI) has formed lower highs since April 30.In other words, a bearish divergence suggests PEPE’s upside momentum will likely weaken in the short term. PEPE ended the month trading at $0.0000007247..
