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Ether (ETH), Ethereum's native toke, has been continuing its uptrend against Bitcoin (BTC) as euphoria around its upcoming network upgrade, "the Merge," grows.

ETH at multi-month highs against BTC

On the daily chart, ETH/BTC surged to an intraday high of 0.075 on Aug. 6, following a 1.5% upside move. Meanwhile, the pair's gains came as a part of a broader rebound trend that started a month ago at 0.049, amounting to approximately 50% gains.

The ETH/BTC recovery in part has surfaced due to the Merge, which will have Ethereum switch from proof-of-work (PoW) mining to proof-of-stake (PoS).

Ethereum's "rising wedge" suggests sell-off

From a technical perspective, Ether stares at potential interim losses as ETH/BTC paints a convincing rising wedge. 

Rising wedges are bearish reversal patterns that occur when the price trends higher inside a range defined by two rising, converging trendlines. As a rule, they resolve after the price breaks below the lower trendline by as much as the structure's maximum height.

Cryptocurrencies have failed to break the $1.1 trillion market capitalization resistance, which has been holding strong for the past 54 days. The two leading coins held back the market as Bitcoin (BTC) lost 2.5% and Ether (ETH) retraced 1% over the past seven days, but a handful of altcoins presented a robust rally.

Crypto markets’ aggregate capitalization declined 1% to $1.07 trillion between July 29 and Aug. 5. The market was negatively impacted by reports on Aug. 4 that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating every U.S. crypto exchange after the regulator charged a former Coinbase employee with insider trading.

While the two leading cryptoassets were unable to print weekly gains, traders’ appetite for altcoins was not affected. Investors were positively impacted by the Coinbase exchange partnership with BlackRock, the world’s largest financial asset manager, responsible for $10 trillion worth of investments.

Coinbase Prime, the service offered to BlackRock’s clients, is an institutional trading solution that provides trading, custody, financing and staking on over 300 digital assets. Consequently, comparing the winners and losers among the top-80 coins provides skewed results, as 10 of those rallied 12% or more over the past seven days:

FLOW rallied 48% after Instagram announced support for the Flow blockchain via Dapper Wallet. The social network controlled by Meta (formerly Facebook) is expanding nonfungible token integration.

Cryptocurrencies have failed to break the $1.1 trillion market capitalization resistance, which has been holding strong for the past 54 days. The two leading coins held back the market as Bitcoin (BTC) lost 2.5% and Ether (ETH) retraced 1% over the past seven days, but a handful of altcoins presented a robust rally.

Crypto markets’ aggregate capitalization declined 1% to $1.07 trillion between July 29 and Aug. 5. The market was negatively impacted by reports on Aug. 4 that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating every U.S. crypto exchange after the regulator charged a former Coinbase employee with insider trading.

While the two leading cryptoassets were unable to print weekly gains, traders’ appetite for altcoins was not affected. Investors were positively impacted by the Coinbase exchange partnership with BlackRock, the world’s largest financial asset manager, responsible for $10 trillion worth of investments.

Coinbase Prime, the service offered to BlackRock’s clients, is an institutional trading solution that provides trading, custody, financing and staking on over 300 digital assets. Consequently, comparing the winners and losers among the top-80 coins provides skewed results, as 10 of those rallied 12% or more over the past seven days:

FLOW rallied 48% after Instagram announced support for the Flow blockchain via Dapper Wallet. The social network controlled by Meta (formerly Facebook) is expanding nonfungible token integration.

The United States Labor market added 528,000 jobs in July, much better than the 258,000 estimate. Wages saw growth of 5.2% year-over-year and 0.5% over the month. This suggests that inflation remains high and the U.S. Federal Reserve may continue with its rate hikes in the near future. 

After staying in close correlation with the U.S. equities markets for the past several months, the crypto space could be ready to chalk out a new course.

Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone and senior market structure analyst Jamie Coutts said in a recent report that Bitcoin (BTC) has started base building similar to the one seen near $5,000 in 2018–2019. They expect the recovery to decouple from stocks and behave more like U.S. "Treasury bonds or gold.”

Although crypto prices have plunged sharply during the ongoing bear market, it has not dented investors’ appetite. A report by crypto analytics firm Messari and Dove Metrics showed that the crypto space raised $30.3 billion in funds in 2022, surpassing the total amount raised in 2021.

Could Bitcoin continue its recovery or will bears pose a strong challenge at higher levels? Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

Bitcoin (BTC) saw fresh rejection at $23,500 resistance on Aug. 5 as United States equities failed to embrace surprisingly strong payroll data.

"Collapsing real wages" poke fun at payroll print

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed BTC/USD as bears kept the market in its intraday trading range.

Wall Street opened with a whimper despite U.S. payrolls for July coming in at twice estimated levels. The curious reaction had some analysts arguing that the numbers did not in fact show economic strength, but rather existing workers taking on second jobs due to inflation.

“The gain of 528K jobs in July as the labor force participation rate fell to 62.1, means that most of the new jobs went to people who already had jobs,” gold bug Peter Schiff responded.

“Collapsing real wages force many workers to moonlight to pay the bills. If the labor market were strong one job would be enough.”

Binance announced on Friday that its Binance Card now supports three new altcoins. Card users now have the possibility to access their holdings of Ripple (XRP), Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Avalanche (AVAX). 

The Binance Card allows its holders to “convert and spend cryptocurrencies in over 60 million online and physical stores.” However, the card is only available to European citizens and, according to the website, Ukrainian refugees. Prior to the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, Binance had intentions of expanding its card reach into Ukraine by sometime this year. 

With the latest addition, the card now supports 14 cryptocurrencies, including Cardano (ADA), AVAX, Binance Coin (BNB), Bitcoin (BTC), Binance USD (BUSD), Polkadot (DOT), Ethereum (ETH), S.S. Lazio Fan Token (LAZIO), FC Porto Fan Token (PORTO), Santos FC Fan Token (SANTOS), SHIB, Swipe (SXP), Tether (USDT) and XRP.

New additions to the supported crypto do not change the current payment preferences for those already using the Binance Card.

Related: Binance US will delist AMP following SEC claim token is a security