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Bitcoin (BTC) lost 3% in an hour and Ether (ETH) drifted toward $1,000 on June 30 as pessimism took control of crypto markets.

Traders eye "sweep of lows" for BTC

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD hitting $19,224 on Bitstamp during Asian trading, its lowest since June 19.

A lack of momentum on upticks combined with a failure to reclaim critical support at the 200-week moving average set the scene for fresh weakness on Bitcoin. The largest cryptocurrency thus dived to the support area defined a day prior by Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe.

In fresh analysis on the day, meanwhile, traders toyed with the idea of a relief bounce towards $20,000.

“We're looking for a sweep of the lows and a reclaim before we consider longing because this is a very strong downtrend and we first want to see some strength,” trading platform Cryptop told Twitter followers in part of a new update.

Former Ripple Labs founder Jed McCaleb is nearing the end of his eight-year XRP dump marathon, with only 81.53 million XRP (worth $26.55 million), remaining in his wallet’s balance.

According to Jed Balance, a website tracking his XRP holdings, McCaleb’s wallet name “tacostand” has been shedding an average of 4.06 million XRP over the last month but has ramped up daily transfers to 7.34 million XRP (worth $2.39 million), since Sunday, June 26.

At the current rate of selling his wallet may be depleted within the next two to three weeks to the delight of the crypto community.

On Wednesday, Mason Versluis, a tik tok influencer and youtuber known as Crypto Mason shared the news to his 115,000 followers on Twitter, highlighting that 22 million of XRP has been released in the past three days.

On Wednesday, a parody account of McCaleb with 4,500 followers who describes themselves as “Definitely not the real Jed” posted a photo in front of an eatery called “The Taco Stand”, saying “Almost there.”

Bear markets can be incredibly harsh for projects that have little adoption or lack an applicable use case, but projects that dedicate to building regardless of market sentiment tend to succeed in the next market cycle.

One project that has seen a noticeable boost in volume, despite the wider-market downtrend is Stratis (STRAX), a blockchain development platform designed to help enterprise businesses establish their own blockchain in a simplified manner.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after hitting a low of $0.365 on June 15, the price of STRAX has rallied 220% to hit a daily high of $1.20 on June 29 amid a surging 24-hour trading volume.

Here are three reasons why the price of STRAX is rallying this week as the wider crypto market continues to struggle.

Metaverse launch entices volume

The Metaverse was one of the hottest topics during the bull market of 2021 and the concept continues to be a driving force behind mass adoption in the crypto space.

The United States equities markets have given back some of the gains made last week and that has pulled Bitcoin to the psychological support at $20,000. This suggests that investors are nervous to buy risky assets at higher levels.

Meanwhile, while speaking to the hosts of the Bankless podcast on June 23, Mark Cuban said that the crypto bear market could end after the price gets so cheap that investors go and start buying or an application with utility is launched that attracts users.

Several analysts expect Bitcoin to continue falling and eventually bottom out between $10,000 and $12,000. However, John Bollinger, the creator of the popular Bollinger Bands trading indicator, said that the monthly charts suggest that Bitcoin’s price has reached “a logical place to put in a bottom.”

Could bears maintain the selling pressure and pull cryptocurrency prices lower? Let’s study the charts of the top 10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin turned down from $22,000 on June 26 and has gradually slipped to the immediate support at $19,637. This suggests that the bears remain in command and every rally is being sold into.

Uniswap (UNI) market valuation could grow by 100% in the second half of 2022 as it paints a classic bearish reversal pattern.

UNI price bullish setup

Dubbed "inverse head and shoulders (IH&S)," the technical setup takes shape when the price forms three troughs in a row below a common support level (neckline), with the middle one (head) deeper than the other two (shoulders).

Additionally, it resolves after the price breaks above the support level.

The UNI price trend since May 23 check all the boxes for forming an IH&S pattern, except the right shoulder. A retest of its neckline near $5.71 would form the right shoulder, increasing the possibility of an iH&S breakout scenario, as shown below.

As a rule of technical analysis, the price breaking out of an IH&S structure can rally by as much as the maximum distance between its head's lowest point and the neckline. So, UNI's IH&S's upside target comes to be around $9.78, up over 100% from today's price.

Terra's $40-billion experiment to create a functional "algorithmic stablecoin" project has failed drastically following its collapse in May.

Nonetheless, its native stablecoin TerraClassicUSD (USTC), earlier called TerraUSD (UST), has been thriving in the past week.

Dead stablecoin walking

To recap, UST lost its U.S. dollar peg in May following mass withdrawals from Anchor Protocol, a lending and borrowing platform offering up to 20% yield to clients on their UST deposits. As of June 15, the token was almost worthless, trading at $0.005 at the Kraken crypto exchange.

But USTC started recovering afterward, insomuch that its value per token almost reached $0.10 on June 29. Simultaneously, its capitalization surged from $65 million to $767 million in the same period, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

That is despite USTC operating as an abandoned token after Terra launched a new blockchain with a new native asset LUNA 2.0, following a "hard fork" in May.

Bitcoin (BTC) has hit new record highs this week — not in U.S. dollar terms, but against its longtime competitor, Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView confirms that on June 29, BCH/BTC officially set its lowest ever price.

CoinFLEX debacle ensnares BCH supporter Ver

Bitcoin Cash, also known as “Bcash” by those critical of the coin’s ethos and future, gained notoriety in 2017 when it became the first major hard fork of the Bitcoin network to take on BTC itself.

Months after launching, the altcoin hit highs of around 0.43 BTC per token, this proving something of a fakeout for investors who have spent the intervening period watching its value steadily decline.

Arguably the most vocal BCH supporter, entrepreneur Roger Ver, has nonetheless continued to tout its supremacy over Bitcoin, with price woes having little impact on his rhetoric.

The TON Foundation, an organization developing the Telegram-initiated blockchain project, the TON blockchain, on Tuesday officially announced that TON miners have mined the final toncoin.

"Tens of thousands of miners have mined the entire issuance of toncoins, which was about 5 billion tokens,” TON Foundation founding member and core developer Anatoly Makosov said in a statement to Cointelegraph. The last toncoin was mined on June 28, he noted.

The end of toncoin mining marks a major milestone in TON's distribution, starting its new era as an entirely PoS blockchain. From now on, new toncoins will only enter circulation via PoS validation, the TON Foundation said. That will result in a cut in the total influx of new toncoins into the network by around 75% to the existing limit of 200,000 tokens per day.

The TON price has immediately reacted to the news, surging 34% over the past 24 hours. The token is trading at $1.41, according to data from CoinGecko.

By definition, proof-of-stake, or PoS, is a consensus algorithm that operates depending on a validator’s stake in the network. The PoS algorithm is opposed to proof-of-work, or PoW, the original consensus algorithm of major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), which is based on blocks validated through computing power provided by miners.

Solana (SOL) continued its recovery trend on June 28 while inching closer to triggering a classic bullish reversal setup.

SOL's price gained 2.42%, reaching an intraday high of $39.40/ The SOL/USD pair is now up 50% as a part of a broader retracement move that began on June 14 after falling to lows of $26.

Solana price eyes 75% rally

The latest buying period in the Solana market has been painting what appears to be an "inverse head and shoulders pattern (IH&S)" pattern.

The bullish reversal setup appears when the price forms three troughs in a row below a common support trendline called "neckline." The middle trough, known as "head," is always deeper than the other two troughs, called shoulders.

An IH&S setup resolves after the price breaks above the neckline level. Also, as a rule of technical analysis, the pattern's profit target comes to be at length equal to the maximum distance between the head's lowest tip and the neckline.

Troubled crypto lending firm Celsius is putting their best foot forward to recover operations alongside CEO Alex Mashinsky, who currently stays in the United States, the company has claimed.

A spokesperson for Celsius has denied rumors that the company's CEO tried to flee the U.S. last week amid the ongoing liquidity crisis of the Celsius Network.

The representative told Cointelegraph on Monday that the firm continues working on restoring liquidity, stating:

“All Celsius employees — including our CEO — are focused and hard at work in an effort to stabilize liquidity and operations. To that end, any reports that the Celsius CEO has attempted to leave the U.S. are false.”

Celsius’ statement came shortly after Mike Alfred, co-founder of the crypto analytics firm Digital Assets Data, took to Twitter on June 26 to claim that Mashinsky attempted to leave the country last week via Morristown Airport in New Jersey, the United States.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) current bear market is one of the worst, according to a report by on-chain analytics firm Glassnode. This was the first time in history that the Mayer Multiple slipped below the previous cycle’s low. Bitcoin’s fall below $20,000 on June 18 also marked the biggest loss ever booked by investors in a single day at $4.23 billion. Considering the above factors and a few other events, Glassnode believes that the capitulation in Bitcoin may have started.

Bitcoin whales seem to have started their purchasing, suggesting that the bottom may be close and on June 25, analytics resource "Game of Trades" highlighted that demand from whales holding 1,000 to 10,000 Bitcoin witnessed a sharp spike in demand.

Another sign that traders are purchasing comes from Glassnode comments suggesting that the 30-day average change in the supply kept on exchanges plummeted by 153,849 Bitcoin on June 26, the largest ever in history.

Could bulls continue their purchases on dips and form a higher low? Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin turned down from $22,000 on June 26, indicating that the sentiment remains negative and traders are selling on minor rallies. The bears will try to pull the price to the psychological level of $20,000.

Amid the Chinese government continuing to celebrate the massive decline of cryptocurrency markets this year, one key local blockchain expert has referred to crypto as a “Ponzi scheme.”

Yifan He, CEO of Red Date Technology, a major tech firm involved in the development of China’s major blockchain project, the Blockchain Service Network (BSN), has penned a new article devoted to various kinds of cryptocurrencies and their supposed Ponzi-like nature.

Published in the local newspaper The People’s Daily on June 26, the piece refers to private cryptocurrencies as the “biggest Ponzi scheme in human history.”

The author mentioned the Terra network’s collapse, with the native token LUNA crashing 99% and the algorithmic UST stablecoin losing its 1:1 peg value to the U.S. dollar in May 2022. He also criticized the increasingly popular virtual currency concept known as X-to-earn, referring to move-to-earn or play-to-earn projects, calling the model a “phishing strategy.”

The BSN chair also mentioned some well-known criticism of Bitcoin (BTC) by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and legendary investor Warren Buffett.

Dogecoin (DOGE) looks ready to extend its rebound move despite the current crypto bear market.

79% chances DOGE will extend its rebound move

DOGE's price appears to have been painting a "bump-and-run-reversal (BARR) bottom" since May 11, a technical pattern that points to extended trend reversals in a bear market. It consists of three successful phases: Lead-In, Bump, and Run.

The "Lead-In phase" sees the price consolidating inside a narrow, sideways range, showing an interim bias conflict among investors.

That follows the "Bump phase," wherein the price drops and recovers sharply, leading to a price breakout, defined by the "Run phase."

Dogecoin appears to be in the Bump Phase while eyeing a breakout above the BARR bottom's falling trendline resistance. Suppose DOGE breaks above the said price ceiling. Then, as a rule of technical analysis, it would eye a run-up toward the BARR's origin level.

XCarnival, a liquidity provider for the Ethereum ecosystem, recovered 1,467 Ether (ETH) just a day after suffering an exploit that drained 3,087 ETH, worth roughly $3.8 million, from the protocol.

Blockchain investigator Peckshield noticed the XCarnival hack as it came across a stream of transactions that eventually bled 3,087 ETH from the protocol. Explaining the nature of the exploit, Peckshield stated:

“The hack is made possible by allowing a withdrawn pledged NFT to be still used as the collateral, which is then exploited by the hacker to drain assets from the pool.”

Soon after the revelation, XCarnival proactively informed the users about the hack while temporarily suspending a part of its services to counter the annoying attack. The protocol also offered the hacker 1,500 ETH as a bounty in addition to offering exemption from legal proceedings.

Eventually, XCarnival suspended the smart contracts and deposit and borrowing features until it could identify and rectify the internal bug that made the hack possible. According to Packshield, the hacker used a previously withdrawn pledged NFT from the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection as collateral to drain the assets.

Bitcoin (BTC) starts a new week above $20,000 but heading for a new bearish record as a key support level remains out of reach.

After a calm weekend punctuated by a brief spike to near $22,000, BTC/USD is back near the Friday closing price of CME futures markets.

A “round trip” thus allows traders to pick up where they left off at the end of last week’s final Wall Street trading session, but what could lie in store in the coming days?

A familiar cocktail of macro threats and ongoing bearish tendencies make the current climate far from ideal for the average hodler. Despite seeing some relief last week, crypto markets continue to bear the brunt of cold feet, which have defined macro sentiment increasingly throughout 2022.

With the June monthly close fast approaching, meanwhile, Bitcoin faces a few days of reckoning amid what could be its worst monthly performance since 2018.