Ethereum Price Analysis: ETH/USD may retest $160.00 before another bullish leg towards $200.00

• ETH/USD is sliding down, the major trend is still bullish.
• DeFi protocol hacks may have unwanted consequences in the long run.

Ethereum hit $190.00 on April 18 only to retreat to $181.80 by press time. The second-largest digital asset hit the low at $176.55 on Sunday and has been range-bound with bullish bias ever since. However, the recovery is limited for now. ETH/USD has gained 1% since the beginning of Monday and stayed unchanged on a day-to-day basis. Ethereum's market value is registered at $20.3 billion, while an average daily trading volume settled at $18.8 billion.

ETH/USD: Technical picture

On the daily chart, ETH/USD slipped below SMA100 at $184.50, however, it is still moving within a bullish trend from March 13 low. A critical support is created by the upside-looking trend line (currently at $166.00), though ETH bears will have to pass $172.00 (daily SMA200) before they set their eyes on the trend line. Once it is broken, the sell-off may be extended towards daily SMA50 at $159.60 and psychological $150.00.

On the upside, a sustainable move above daily SMA100 ($184.50) will open up the way to $190.00. This area is a hard nut to crack for ETH bulls; however, once it is cleared, psychological $200.00 will come into focus.

ETH/USD daily chart

DeFi woes do not affect ETH, at least so far

The weekend turned out bad for Chinese DeFi protocol dForce that lost nearly 100% of its money pool to hackers. The cybercriminals used the vulnerability of the smart contracts and drained about $25 million from the wallets of Lendf platform – one of the decentralized protocols supported by dForce Foundation. 

While these projects are based on Ethereum blockchain, their issues do not affect ETH price so far. Su Zhu, the CEO of the Three Arrows capital, noticed the fact and commented on it:

What if sc hacks of DeFi protocols are structurally bullish bc they generally involve the flow of ETH from those who understand Ethereum less to those who understand it more?

However, the fact that average users of DeFi platform lose their money due to low security of the projects or incompetence of smart contract developers may prove to be harmful to the industry in the long run. According to Ceteris Paribus (@ceterispar1bus) this situation discourages cryptocurrency mass adoption as ordinary people lose trust and regard the industry as insecure.

Why would this be bullish? ETH is already overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of these people. UX is still terrible, and average joe's losing money on complex products doesn't exactly encourage adoption. – @ceterispar1bus