Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies Mildly Upbeat

This weekend was not an excuse to dump the crypto prices. Although there were attempts to do so, cryptocurrencies held and increased the price.  Bitcoin is up +1.1% from its 72-hour figure, Ethereum a modest 0.5% while Ripple went up 3.25%. But there were large gainers too, such as ATOM (+10.1%), Tezos (+22.9%),  ALGO (+18.4%), and Ravencoin (+26%).  On the Ethereum token section, the best performers were ECOREAL (+39.5%), S4FE (+14%), and SLV (+16.56%).

Fig 1 - 72H Crypto Heat Map

The market capitalization of the sector is currently $204.1 billion,  3 billion over the last Friday's value, a 1.5%  average growth of the market. Meanwhile, the traded volume descended to 20.1 billion  (+18%).  Bitcoin Dominance is presently 66.35%.

Hot News

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) is planning to test its new digital Yuan in the cities of Shenzhen and Suzhou. That would put them as being the first Central Bank on the planet to issue a digital currency. According to caijin.com, PBOC will do the test with the collaboration of several state-owned companies: Three Telecom and four commercial banks.

Ethereum Istanbul Hard Fork, Ethereums 2.0 major update, started to work, several exchanges, among which are Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, and Bitfinex, will support the new coin. Node operators and miners of the network also gave ample collaboration to the hard fork. The new fork that began operating on Dec. 07, according to Vitalik Buterin, can perform 3,000 transactions per second.

According to Cointelegraph, the Bank of France is planning to test a central bank digital currency for financial institutions in the first quarter of 2020. Its Governor, François Villeroy, said the pilot wouldn't involve retail payments made by citizens.

Technical Analysis - Bitcoin

Chart 1 - Bitcoin 4H Chart

Bitcoin is moving in the upper side of its Bollinger Bands, and the bands themselves have a positive slope, whereas the MACD is in a bearish phase.  Overall the price is slightly bullish, but it is finding resistance at $7.580. The key levels to keep are $7,580 for buyers and $7,416 for sellers.

Ripple

Chart 2 - Ripple 4H Chart

Ripple has been moving up, and it reached $ 0.233, as we expected. Now the price has receded a bit from there. The price keeps moving in the upper side of the Bollinger Bands, and close to its +1SD line, which is bullish. Although this is positive, we have to keep in mind that it is a second leg of what might become a sideways channel. So we need to watch how the price behaves when it test the $0.233 level again. Another bounce would create a double top.  Our critical levels to watch then are $0.233 and $ 0.2266.

Ethereum

Chart 3 - Ethereum 4H Chart

Ethereum moves obeying an upward trendline making minor higher lows and highs. The price has bounced off of the $152 level and now is touching its support created by the previous top. The price moves mainly in the upper side of the Bollinger Bands, and its bias is bullish.

The main levels to observe are $146.5 and $152. We should keep, also an eye on a potential close below the upward trendline.

Litecoin

Chart 4 - Litecoin 4H Chart

Litecoin is creating higher lows, but it fails to make higher highs, so it is forming a triangular structure. The price moves mostly in the upper side of the Bollinger bands, so it shows a slightly positive bias. The level for buyers to break is $46.7, whereas sellers would like the $45.15 level to break.

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