Ethereum Price Analysis: Bitfinex users are buying ETH, the rest are selling

• ETH/USD recovered from the intraday low, but the further upside is limited by daily SMA50.
• 90% of all ETH coins on Bitfinex are locked in long positions.

At the time of writing, Ethereum (ETH) is changing hands at $153.00, down 2.5% on a day-to-day basis and 3.5% since the beginning Monday. The second-largest coin with the current market value of $16.9 billion has recovered from the intraday low of $149.84, however, the further upside seems to be limited at this stage. 

ETH/USD: Technical picture

On a daily chart, ETH/USD is still moving along the upside-looking trend line (currently at $149.20). A sustainable move below this area will trigger more sell-off and push the price towards $140.80 (the lowerest level of the previous week) and $130.00. Considering the downward-looking RSI on the daily chart, the bearish scenario looks likely, unless the sentiments on the cryptocurrency market are improved sharply.

On the upside, the recovery is initially capped by psychological $160.00. Once it is out of the way, the upside is likely to gain traction with the next focus on daily SMA50 at $168.00 and $170.00. This resistance separates us from daily SMA200 at $172.50 that has stopped the recovery in the beginning of April.

ETH/USD daily chart

1.8% of all ETH coins are locked in long marginal positions

Nearly all margin traders on Bitfinex are longing ETH for some reason. The twitter user lowstrife (@strife) noted that the total amount of all marginal positions on Bitfinex reached nearly 2 million ETH, which is about 1.8% of all coins in circulation.

1.975 million ETH (1.8% of total circulating supply) is now margin long on Bitfinex. Just Bitfinex. +250k just got filled over the last 4 hours.

However, other cryptocurrency exchanges have different statistics. Thus, only 47% of ETH coins are long on BitMEX. The reasons why Bitfinex ETH margin trading is skewed to the long side remain unclear. However, some traders suggest that there may be a massive long squeeze shortly.
 

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