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Bitcoin (BTC) has been stuck in a narrow range for the past several days. A minor positive is that the range has formed near the recent local high. This suggests that the bulls are not rushing to the exit as they anticipate another leg higher.

Bitcoin’s consolidation has pulled its market dominance to 48% from over 50% on June 30. This shows that market participants have been gradually shifting their focus to select altcoins, which are starting to move up.

However, an altcoin recovery is likely to remain in place only till Bitcoin shows strength. If Bitcoin turns down sharply, the possibility of a sell-off in altcoins remains high. While select altcoins provide trading opportunities, cryptocurrency traders should be careful and keep a close watch on Bitcoin’s price action.

What are the important support and resistance levels to watch out for on Bitcoin? Let’s study the charts of top-5 cryptocurrencies that may try to move in the near term.

Bitcoin price analysis

The bulls managed to sustain Bitcoin above the 50-day simple moving average ($29,377) for the past few days but a negative sign is that they haven’t been able to propel the price above the 20-day exponential moving average ($29,670).

The 25 basis point rate hike by the Federal Reserve on July 26 and the subsequent commentary by Fed Chair Jerome Powell failed to catapult Bitcoin (BTC) out of its range. This suggests that the event did not have any surprises and the outcome was already priced in by the markets.

The crypto markets continued their lackluster performance on July 28 after the United States Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Index print came in lower than analysts’ expectations. The PCE is the Fed’s preferred inflation metric hence it is watched closely by market observers.

Although the near-term price action has kept the traders guessing, it is important to keep an eye on the long-term crypto story. Standard Chartered head of crypto research Geoff Kendrick said while speaking with CNBC that he expects Bitcoin to end 2024 in the range of $100,000 to $120,000. He believes that Bitcoin is likely to witness price patterns seen during previous halving cycles.

Even as Bitcoin consolidates, could select altcoins break out of their slumber?

Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

The price of Worldcoin (WLD) has stabilized after a volatile debut across mainstream cryptocurrency exchanges.

On July 29, WLD price rose nearly 6% to $2.35. Still, the token was down 70% from its market debut peak of $7.50.

It now appears stuck inside the $2-2.50 trading range, hinting at a growing bias conflict in the market.

WLD could stick around $2 until October

Notably, WLD is a part of the Worldcoin Foundation launched by OpenAI's Sam Altman on July 24.

The token has a maximum circulation supply of 143 million with 43 million going to Worldcoin's app users via "airdrop" — 25 WLD per user — if they verify their identity using an eye-scanning physical orb.

The launch of memecoin Pond0x (PNDX) has led to millions of dollars in losses for investors, according to multiple reports on social media on July 28. Data from the Maestrobots trading app shows that the token reached a price of $0.36 before collapsing to near zero in a span of five minutes.

The launch of Pond0x was announced on July 28 by pseudonymous Not Larva Labs founder “Pauly,” who is known only by his X username. Not Larva Labs is the developer of an NFT trading app for CryptoPunks and for a separate parody collection called “CryptoPhunks.” It is not associated with Larva Labs, the creators of CryptoPunks.

In the announcement, Pauly listed the contract address for PNDX and the URL for its official web app.

The web app contained a Pepe meme graphic, similar to the ones used in successful memecoins like PepeCoin. The app allowed users to mint new PNDX tokens in exchange for a fixed amount of Ether (ETH), similar to a presale or fundraise. However, many users expected the fundraise to be done on Uniswap, and the listing of both the website and the contract address in the same post caused confusion, according to social media reports.

Related: Meme coin price predictions 2023 compared: Pepe Coin, Thug Life, and more

The year 2022 was not a very good year for Cosmos and its vision of inter-blockchain communications (IBC). The collapse of the Terra Luna ecosystem (the biggest protocol on Cosmos at the time), tension between co-founders and a fall in the token’s price all cast a shadow on its future prospects. That said, projects such as dYdX and cross-chain oracle protocol Seda continue to call the network home and are adamant about its IBC vision.

Currently, Seda says it enables over 12 million data feeds across 24 networks. In an interview with Cointelegraph at EthCC Paris, Jasper de Gooijer and Peter Mitchell, co-founders of the Seda protocol (formerly known as Flux), discussed the importance of oracles in cross-chain bridges and how they protect the value they enable.

Cointelegraph: How do oracles add value to IBC? 

Jasper de Gooijer: The current problem is that smart contracts can only query data outside of blockchains themselves, right? That greatly limits the amount of use cases that smart contracts have, such as in lending markets. So in those markets, if you want knowledge on price on, say, six chains at once, you need six oracle providers, and that's when you need multichain oracles.

CT: What is the biggest accomplishment or technological breakthrough thus far in the Seda ecosystem?

Japanese blockchain developer HashPort has raised 1.2 billion Japanese yen ($8.5 million) in a Series C funding round led by Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners and Japanese billionaire entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa. The new round brings HashPort’s total funding to 2 billion yen ($14.2 million). 

According to the July 28 announcement, the funds will allow HashPort to consolidate business and secure a compliance management system and related personnel to navigate the sophisticated global regulatory environment for its expansion. The HashPort ecosystem includes its namesake blockchain-related consulting and system solution in Japan and HashPalette, a public chain specializing in nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The company is also scheduled to launch a metaverse game dubbed The Land Elf Crossing in the fourth quarter.

In July 2021, HashPort’s Palette Chain partnered with cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck to launch Japan’s first initial exchange offering (IEO), or an initial coin offering facilitated by an exchange. The IEO raised a total of 22.45 billion yen ($160 million) in Palette (PLT) token commitments. The company claims that since then, PLT Place, the official NFT marketplace of Palette Chain, has accumulated over 370,000 users.

HashPort Group president Seihaku Yoshida said the company plans to cooperate with Expo 2025, an upcoming expo to be held in Osaka, Japan, to build digital wallets and digital passports linked to soulbound tokens (SBTs). “Expo 2025 is expected to attract more than 28 million visitors. If more than 10 million people experience Web3 for the first time, we believe this will be a historic event," Yoshida wrote.

In December 2022, Cointelegraph reported that Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, now an investor in the company, partnered with HashPort to issue SBTs. The companies plan to research SBTs to explore practical uses for communities, jobs, knowledge-sharing services and decentralized autonomous organizations.

The recent flood of scam tweets on pro-XRP lawyer Jeremy Hogan’s hacked account has finally dried up after nearly four days.

Since July 24, the XRP community has been diligently warning others and tagging Twitter’s support after they noticed Hogan’s account tweeting malicious links for a purported XRP (XRP) giveaway.

As of 1 am on July 28, all of the XRP-giveaway-related tweets have been deleted, suggesting Hogan has either regained access to his account or that Twitter support has finally intervened.

The last tweet sent out from Hogan’s account — now deleted — said that he was “feeling so generous” and offered to return double the amount of XRP sent to his address.

On-chain data shows the mentioned address managed to gain 784 XRP in three hours, amounting to approximately $561 at current prices. It was sent in by 12 users.

Venture capital giant Sequoia Capital reportedly downsized its cryptocurrency fund from $585 million to $200 million, amid a liquidity crunch and a pivot away toward smaller crypto players.

According to a July 27 Wall Street Journal report, the tech-focused VC firm told investors in March it would reduce its Sequoia Crypto Fund — along with its ecosystem fund — to better reflect changed market conditions.

The cryptocurrency fund will now focus more on backing early-stage startups, given the recent crypto industry turmoil that took away many of the opportunities to back larger companies.

Another motive behind the cuts is to lower the capital threshold and thus the barrier to entry for investors to partake in Sequoia’s fund offerings, according to the sources.

“We made these changes to sharpen our focus on seed-stage opportunities and to provide liquidity to our limited partners,” reportedly said Sequoia in remarks to the Financial Times. The firm added it had returned more than $15 billion to investors over the past three years.

The latest legal action against Block.one (B1) — the creator and original seller of Eos (EOS) — could potentially help plaintiffs get a higher compensation, according to EOS Network Foundation (ENF) founder and CEO Yves La Rose.

On July 25, La Rose officially announced that ENF is preparing a lawsuit against Block.one for its failure to follow through on its $1 billion following its $4.1 billion raise in 2018.

The CEO argued that Block.one’s broken promises to invest $1 billion caused major issues for the EOS community and promised to hold the firm accountable.

As many investors have already been part of another class action against Block.one, a number of those might need to opt out of their current lawsuits, La Rose said.

“They would do that if they aren’t satisfied with the current settlement offer and believe their interests are better suited by opting out, which is a common practice,” the ENF founder told Cointelegraph.

Crypto degens have been quick to try and capitalize on a widely-watched hearing where former United States government officials have claimed the existence of alien spacecraft and “biologics."

Testifying under oath at the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, David Grusch, a former Pentagon task force member on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) and whistleblower, accused the U.S. government of covering up alien visitation to Earth.

The July 26 hearing has since gone viral, prompting over 50 alien, UFO, or other extra-terrestrial themed-tokens to crop up over the last 24 hours.

While Grusch admitted he couldn’t provide answers to specific questions due to much of the information remaining classified, he said that the United States government was in possession of “non-human” spacecraft. Citing Pentagon sources who still worked on the UAP program, Grusch claimed that there were “non-human biologics” found onboard these craft.

Also testifying at the hearing was executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace Ryan Graves and retired Navy Commander David Fravor.

In 2018, Ethereum lead developer Fabian Vogelsteller contacted the community for a new standard for smart contracts he created alongside co-founder Vitalik Buterin. Dubbed ERC-20, Vogelsteller, at the time, only wished for input regarding the novel idea. Little did he know that ERC-20 would ignite a wave of initial coin offerings (ICOs) shortly after its inception to become the industry gold standard for issuing tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.

Just as ERC-20 tokens were gaining traction, Vogelsteller left the Ethereum Foundation the same year to focus on developing a new blockchain, Lukso. In an interview with Cointelegraph, the ERC-20 inventor discussed his motivation for creating his multiverse blockchain, as well as the latest token standard developments in the sector.

Cointelegraph: Currently, ERC-20 is the gold token standard in the ecosystem. But in 2018, you left Ethereum to develop Lukso. What was the motivation behind that?

Fabian Vogelsteller: The human story behind it is that Marjorie [who is also Lukso’s co-founder], my wife at the time, had an idea of creating a blockchain for lifestyle and fashion. And I thought that’s a great idea. So, the story evolved to create a blockchain specifically focused on more mainstream use cases, such as for lifestyle, fashion designers, social media, content creators and YouTubers. Anything that's more like what the internet users today would use rather than the token, finance or DeFi world.

CT: What inspired you to create the ERC-20 standard?

Bitcoin broke below the support of its narrow range on July 24, but the bears have not been able to capitalize on it and start a sharp downward move. This is a positive sign, as it shows a lack of aggressive selling at lower levels. The bulls will have to push and sustain the price back above $31,000 to trap the aggressive bears.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) volatility is likely to pick up following the Federal Reserve’s policy decision on July 26 and the subsequent commentary by Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Rather than the knee-jerk reaction to the event, it will be of interest to note where Bitcoin’s price settles down.

When the price enters and remains inside a range for an extended period, the breakout from it usually ends up with a strong trending move. It is difficult to predict the direction of the breakout with certainty. Hence, it is best to wait for the price to escape the range before initiating large bets.

Traders need to be careful because sometimes the first breakout tends to be a fake move. What are the important levels to watch out for in Bitcoin and the altcoins? Let’s study the charts of the top 10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

Bitcoin price analysis

The bulls have protected the 50-day simple moving average (SMA) of $29,134 for the past two days, but they have failed to start a strong rebound. This indicates that the bears are keeping up the pressure.

Concerns of a potential appeal by the United States securities regulator to the landmark Ripple ruling earlier this month were shrugged off by Ripple’s chief legal officer Stuart Alderoty.

Alderoty believes if the SEC takes the case to an appeal, the court could move to consolidate Ripple Labs’ partial victory over the financial regulator even further.

Speaking on a July 26 TechCrunch podcast, Alderoty reiterated his position that the XRP (XRP) token does not constitute an investment contract and that the Ripple team would not “shy away” from any appeal brought to the courts by the SEC.

“We think the judge got that right, and we think that was a faithful application of the law, and I think a court of appeals will not only affirm that but maybe even amplify that to even a greater extent.”

On July 13, Judge Analisa Torres ruled XRP was not a security when sold to the public on crypto exchanges but can be treated as a security when sold to institutional investors.

In the latest episode of "The Market Report," analyst and writer Marcel Pechman discusses the Worldcoin token launch, why it is controversial, and the differences between it and most altcoins. According to the analysis, investors should take time to understand the project before even considering an investment.

Looking at the tokenomics of the Worldcoin token, launched on July 24, there are two absolute outliers. Firstly, the extremely high volume overtook the market cap, as the token reportedly traded 1.6 times its entire capitalization in the first 24 hours. How’s that even possible?

According to Pechman, one must understand that the project has lent 100 million tokens to market makers. Only 8 million coins were handed out to users, who may or may not have flipped their positions, but this does not justify the $400 million reported volume.

Now, on to the second part of the story, which Pechman finds even more concerning. Some 40% of the tokens will be unlocked between July 2024 and July 2025, and that’s 500x more than the 8 million currently awarded to users via airdrop.

Ultimately, to maintain a market capitalization below Chainlink, for example, at $4 billion, the Worldcoin token price in July 2025 would have to be below $1, or 58% below the current level.

Ether price is down today, and several data points are beginning to suggest that further downside could be in store. 

On July 24, Ethereum (ETH) experienced a drop close to its monthly low, reaching $1,825, amid Bitcoin's negative price action, as uncertainty loomed over macroeconomic conditions and a potential whale sell-off.

Several on-chain and technical indicators point to further downside in ETH prices. However, the extent of this downward movement could be limited, considering the profit levels of existing holders and decrease in its liquid supply.

ETH on-chain analysis suggests more downside

Since the beginning of 2023, Ethereum's network value to transaction value (NVT) metric has indicated that the asset may have been overpriced.

Glassnode's NVT signal gauges the relative value of the Ethereum network by comparing the market price to the volume of on-chain transactions. A higher NVT reading implies that ETH could be trading at a premium.