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Ether (ETH) gained 5.6% on Dec. 20 after testing the $1,150 support the previous day. Still, a bearish trend prevails, forming a three-week-long descending channel, a price action attributed to expectations of further U.S. Federal Reserve interest rate hikes.

Jim Bianco, head of institutional research firm Bianco Research, said on Dec. 20 that the Fed will keep the economy tightening in 2023. Later that day, Japan’s central bank increased interest rates to fight inflation, far later than its counterparties. The unexpected move made analysts more bearish toward risk assets, including cryptocurrencies.

Ethereum might have caught some tailwind after the global payment processor Visa proposed a solution to allow automatic funding from Ethereum wallets. Auto-payments for recurring bills aren’t possible for self-custodial wallets so Visa would rely on smart contracts, known as “account abstraction.” Curiously, the concept emerged in 2015 with Vitalik Buterin.

The most pressing issue, however, is regulation. On Dec. 19, the U.S. House Financial Services Committee reintroduced legislation aimed at creating innovation offices within government agencies dealing with financial services. According to North Carolina Representative Patrick McHenry, companies could apply for an “enforceable compliance agreement” with the offices at agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Consequently, investors believe Ether could revisit sub-$1,000 prices as the DXY dollar index loses strength while the 10-year U.S. treasury yields show higher demand for protection. Trader CryptoCondom expects the next couple of months to be extremely bearish for crypto markets.

Bitcoin (BTC) and other bulls will not benefit from a major change in United States inflation policy in 2023, one analyst says.

In a Twitter thread on Dec. 20, Jim Bianco, head of institutional research firm Bianco Research, said that the Federal Reserve would not “pivot” on rate hikes next year.

Bianco: Japan YCC move "matters for all markets"

In light of the surprise yield curve control (YCC) tweak by the Bank of Japan (BoJ), analysts have become all the more bearish on the prospects for risk assets this week.

As Cointelegraph reported, the move spelled immediate pain for the U.S. dollar, and with the Wall Street open in sight, equities futures were trending down in step at the time of writing.

For Bianco, the fact that the BoJ was now seeking to follow the Fed in tightening policy to ward off inflation meant that the latter was unlikely to loosen its own policy.

Sasha Ivanov, founder and CEO of the Waves blockchain platform, is planning to launch a new stablecoin amid the ongoing crisis of the Waves-backed stablecoin, Neutrino USD (USDN).

Ivanov took to Twitter on Dec. 20 to announce the USDN situation resolution plan alongside a new stablecoin project.

“I will launch a new stablecoin,” Waves founder wrote, adding that there is going to be a “USDN situation resolution plan set in motion before.” He stressed that nothing new will be launched or announced until the USDC plan resolution is set in motion.

Without specifying the details on the nature of the upcoming stablecoin, Ivanov promised that the stablecoin will be “undepeggable.” 

“The most important thing is to make people whole eventually, let's focus on that.”

BNB (BNB), the native token of the Binance crypto exchange, is under threat of undergoing a significant price correction in the coming weeks, based on a mix of technical and fundamental indicators.

BNB triangle breakdown continues

From a technical perspective, BNB has entered the breakdown stage of its multi-month ascending triangle pattern, a trend continuation indicator. The breakdown could last until the price reaches the level that comes to be at the length equal to the triangle's maximum height.

In other words, BNB's ascending triangle breakdown target is near $170, down about 30% from the current price levels, as shown below. The BNB/USD pair could drop to the said level by January 2023.

For now, BNB's breakdown move appears to be halting near $222, which has served as a strong support level in  recent history, including the declines witnessed in the aftermath of the Terra (LUNA) collapse in May 2022.

BNB could retest the $222 as support, based on a rising wedge technical setup forming on the four-hour chart, as shown below.