Chart of the Day
The crypto market’s multi-day rally seems to have temporarily stalled as U.S. stocks pared losses on Wednesday. In its best week since March this year, BTC made an attempt to climb above the 50-day simple moving average near $24.8k, but ultimately failed before retracing to slightly under the $23k level. As of the time of writing, BTC is consolidating losses at the $22.8 level after shedding 2% of its market value in the last 24 hours. The largest cryptocurrency by market cap is facing overhead resistance levels in the $23.2k to $23.7k range. Failure to rise above this zone will likely send BTC to test its support near the $22.2k level. Bybit Blog reports.
ETH saw a 4.7% loss over the same period and is now trading just below the $1,500 handle. An ascending channel with support near $1,480 is taking shape on ETH’s hourly chart — a key support line to watch out for should ETH fail to clear the major resistance level near $1,560. Major altcoins are now submerged in a sea of red, with FLOW leading the downside correction on a double-digit percentage loss over a similar time frame.
Meanwhile, in the mining sector, BTC’s hash rate continues to decline, which will likely lead to a third consecutive negative difficulty adjustment on Thursday. The upcoming adjustment is estimated to be a reduction of 5.9%, the largest percentage decline since July 2021, in the aftermath of China’s BTC miner exodus.
Talk of the Town
At the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) on Tuesday, Polygon announced the launch of Polygon zkEVM, a “major leap forward” in the world of zero-knowledge technology that aims to significantly reduce transaction costs and improve scalability. In a press release, the Polygon team described zkEVM as the “first Ethereum-equivalent scaling solution that works seamlessly with all existing smart contracts, developer tools, and wallets.” Many have expected a fully featured zk rollup to be years down the road, but Polygon said that the zkEVM testnet will go live this summer, and a mainnet launch can be expected in early 2023.