The recent volatility seen within thee aggregated crypto markets has mostly favored bulls over the past several days and weeks, with many major altcoins like Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and others putting significant distance between their current prices and their recent lows.
This momentum has allowed many of these altcoins to break above key resistance levels that were previously hampering their price action, which has now opened the gates for significantly further upside.
Ethereum, however, has been unable to break above its key bearish trendline that has been suppressing its recent price action, leading some analysts to grow increasingly bearish on the cryptocurrency.
Ethereum Struggles to Break Key Resistance as Analysts Watch for Further Downside
Currently, Ethereum is trading down marginally at its current price of $144, which marks only a slight decrease from its daily highs of $147 that were set concurrently with Bitcoin’s rapid overnight surge to highs of $8,300.
In spite of being stuck within the $140 level, it is important to note that ETH has established the lower-$130 region as a strong support area, as this is where it posted a strong bounce during the recent downturn seen by the aggregated crypto market.
Nik Patel, a prominent cryptocurrency analyst with nearly 75k followers on Twitter, shared his thoughts on ETH’s recent price action in a blog post from earlier today, explaining that the crypto remains in a consolidation phase until it can break above a key multi-month trendline resistance.
“Looking at ETH/USD, we can see that price failed to close above trendline resistance twice over the past few days, but remains in consolidation beneath it, having rallied 25% since the low of mid-December,” he explained.
The key resistance region that Patel is closely watching currently sits between $152 and $161, which is just a hair above its current price levels.
“Above the trendline lies support turned resistance between $152-161, which will be the real test; until this area is cleared, daily market structure remains bearish,” Patel noted.
In the near-term, Ethereum’s price remains closely correlated to that of Bitcoin, so it is highly probable that it will continue ranging sideways until BTC is able to garner some decisive momentum.
If BTC break above its key resistance around $8,300, it could find itself caught within another firm uptrend that allows altcoins like ETH to similarly surge higher.