If the price keeps rising, USD 29,425 would be the closest resistance, the Fibonacci retracement resistance level of the latest bearish move. Bitcoin is creating a bearish candlestick at a confluence of resistance levels of the Fibonacci retracement resistance area between USD 21,900 and USD 22,600.

BTC has traded just above the USD 19,400 support zone for around three months. In December 2021, that relevant area served as the most considerable resistance of all time.

After rallying sharply last week, Bitcoin created a lower long wick, which signals buying pressure. The price also reached a distinctly bullish close of USD 21,826. Since the weekly high and close were too close, many view it as a bullish sign since sellers have not driven the price lower.

The weekly relative strength index (RSI) generated bullish divergences, leaving the oversold territory and the all-time low region.

If the price of BTC keeps rising, USD 29,425 would be the closest resistance. That is the 0.382 Fibonacci retracement resistance level of the latest part of the move to the downside.

The following resistance would be at USD 37,300, the 0.382 Fibonacci retracement resistance level of the downward move after the all-time high.

The Price of Bitcoin Might Continue Increasing despite the Bearish Trend

According to the daily chart, the price of Bitcoin is creating a bearish candlestick at a confluence of resistance levels. The 0.5-0.618 Fibonacci retracement resistance area is between USD 21,900 and USD 22,600, while the previous parallel ascending channel serves as a support line.

However, the daily RSI has just moved above the 50 lines that previously provided resistance, suggesting a bullish trend. Despite that situation, the price needs to resume the channel and the resistance area at the 0.5-0.618 Fibonacci retracement.

The BTC Wave Count Analysis Indicates Further Upward Move

The wave count analysis of the Bitcoin price suggests the fourth wave of a five-wave upward move beginning on August 7^th.

After a short correction, the price might rise toward the 0.618 Fibonacci retracement resistance level at USD 22,700.

The hourly RSI also supports this possibility, generating a bearish divergence, which usually occurs before slight declines.

Meanwhile, the Bitcoin Hash Rate Reaches an All-Time High

The Bitcoin hash rate recently reached a new all-time high of 281.79 million. In addition, the following halving of the network may occur in the fourth quarter of 2023.

The developers of the Bitcoin blockchain have moved up the next halving as the hash rate has reached a new record level. Its raw value of 281.79 million indicates that more people are joining, signaling the good health of the network. The event, scheduled for May 2024, will now occur in the last quarter of 2023 due to the current levels.

The distribution of mining rewards reduces by half during every Bitcoin halving. That event occurs after the extraction of 210,000 blocks, whose date the presence of more miners contribute to bringing it forward.

The Bitcoin network will reduce block rewards to 3,125 units with the next halving. The process will continue until 2140 with the mining of all 21 million coins, which will cause net deflation and a rise in value.

By Alexander Salazar

Some Reddit users accused those launching new coins of being insensitive.

A plethora of royal-themed NFTs, meme cryptocurrencies, and Web 3.0 paraphernalia flooded NFT markets and exchanges following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

As the UK mourns the loss of its 96-year-old monarch, Web 3.0 enthusiasts capitalized on global attention to launch a dizzying array of algorithmically generated “Queen”-themed non-fungible tokens (NFTs), as well as a host of cryptocurrency tokens such as “Queen Elizabeth. Inu”, “QueenDoge” and “London Bridge is down” on Binance Smart Chain and Ethereum.

Queen Elizabeth Inu rallied 28,506% on PancakeSwap, with $17,000 in liquidity at the time of writing. Another token, “Elizabeth”, is up 8,000% on $204,000 in liquidity.

This is somewhat ironic, as the UK prepares to rename its money after the image of the successor monarch, King Charles III. The Royal Mint and the Bank of England will have to exchange some 29 billion British coins and more than 4 billion notes, respectively.

The changes are going to leave Britons and tourists doing a double-take for a while.

The new monarch will face off against the queen in a long-standing British tradition to signal the dawn of a new era.

Other changes will be far slower, including the small matter of the coins and banknotes with the queen’s face. The Royal Mint, which produces the coins, and the Bank of England, which oversees the notes, will phase in new bills and coins adorned with King Charles, but that could take months and even years: The government is in the final throes of phasing out paper bills in favor of longer-lasting polymer notes.

Cryptoqueen NFT, anyone?

Following the algorithmic tradition of the top-tier CryptoPunks NFT collection, a collection called RIP The Queen Official, with over 8,000 images, was listed on OpenSea. Each algorithmically generated image contained slightly different representations of the queen’s eyes and mouth.

Another collection, QueenE, started by Fabio Seva and owner of the maladen.eth ENS domain in July 2022, said that the auction of its 73rd NFT queen would be its last. The pair had planned to create NFTs of the queen while she was alive. The final supposed NFT was sold for 2.73 ETH, followed by a surprise NFT auction of the image of the queen imposed on a skeleton.

Another Pump and Dump?

It remains to be seen whether cryptocurrencies have genuine backing or are just another one of the pump-and-dump schemes that lost investors more than $2.8 billion in 2021, according to Chainalysis.

Pump and dump schemes gain traction through deceptive promotions that cause the price of a cryptocurrency to rise, after which the promoters sell the coins or tokens, causing retail investors to lose large amounts of money.

In January 2022, victims of a pump and dump scheme promoted by Kim Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather filed a class action lawsuit against the pair for promoting EthereumMax, a cryptocurrency unrelated to Ethereum.

Kardashian caused a stir last year when she made an Instagram post promoting the EthereumMax token. “Are you guys into crypto????” Kardashian wrote. “This is not financial advice but sharing what my friends just told me about the Ethereum Max token!”

One Reddit user wrote about the new queen-themed coins that “insensitive” greed strikes again. At the same time, another joked that central banks should be afraid of “ElizabethMoonCorgiRocketCoin”.

By Audy Castaneda

Many analysts fear that the Merge will be insufficient to put deflationary pressure on Ether at current prices. Although 58% of the holders make money with ETH at current price levels, the net growth and trading signals are still bearish.

Those searching for the Ethereum Merge on Google can find a countdown clock, as with the second-last test of the shadow fork before its activation.

Sam Padilla, a Google Cloud blockchain developer, recently showed an update about the real-time Ethereum Merge countdown clock. Referring to it as a surprise for the people behind Ethereum, he said there was excitement about the upcoming developments.

Its 859 TH/s hash rate and current difficulty levels indicate that the Ethereum Merge might occur in about two days and 22 hours.

The launch of the 13^th shadow fork, which copies the information about the state of the Ethereum network, occurred on September 9^th.

Tim Beiko, an Ethereum developer, recently stated they would shut down Kiln, an Ethereum Merge testnet launched in early 2022. He said many also expect the launch of the Ropsten and Rinkeby testnets to occur in the fourth and third quarters of 2022.

A Market Downturn Precedes the Ethereum Merge Transition to PoS

According to Vitalik Buterin, the transition to proof of stake (PoS) may occur between September 13^th and 15^th. However, many fear that change will be insufficient to put deflationary pressure on Ether at current prices.

Bitcoin recently dropped below USD 20,000, fueling the dead cryptocurrency narrative again. Analysts have referred to Bitcoin as a dead crypto over 20 times in 2022 and 461 times since its inception. However, data from 99bitcoin indicate that a significant part remains optimistic about the Merge event.

Thomas Dunleavy, a senior research analyst at Messari Yahoo Finance, said many people think the Merge will die on arrival. He disagreed with that but argued that it would face much selling pressure right away.

The Relationship between On-Chain Metrics and the Price Action of Ether

As the Merge approaches, the number of wallets with more than 1,000 ETH has increased to a 15-month high.

According to data from Intotheblock, 58% of the holders make money at current price levels, while the whales own 40% of all Ether holdings. Despite those bullish metrics, the net growth and trading signals of the Ethereum network are still bearish.

The price of Ether has remained between USD 1,720 and USD 1,784 over the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. Although the second-generation currency has accumulated a gain of more than 20% for two weeks, it has recently suffered minor losses.

However, Ethereum still dominates decentralized finance (DeFi) despite competition from Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), and Polkadot (DOT). According to DeFiLama, the total value locked (TVL) is nearly USD 34.96 billion. ETH now leads 58.7% of the DeFi market with the launch of 553 protocols.

Meanwhile, ETH is trading at around USD 1,739 and has accumulated a 10.1% gain over the last week. While its daily trading volume is above USD 14.59 billion, its market capitalization is about USD 209.32 billion, according to CoinGecko.

By Alexander Salazar

An FDACS bulletin indicated signals to help citizens identify possible phone scams through cryptocurrencies.

The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) recently issued a warning outlining information for identifying robocall auto warranty scams. It should be noted that the warning from the US department indicates that the scammers request to pay for the false services through “gift cards and cryptocurrencies.”

FDACS Newsletter Highlights

The recent surge in consumer complaints against the rise in toll scams, in which scammers use pre-recorded calls to offer fraudulent services, prompted the FDACS to direct phone companies to focus on moderating robocall traffic.

Also, in the newsletter, FDACS highlighted several red flags to identify potential phone scams.

“If you are asked to pay with a gift card or cryptocurrency, it is a scam.” Details the bulletin.

In addition to asking Floridians to refrain from making payments in cryptocurrencies, the FDACS reiterated that no government official would ask for personal information, such as your Social Security number or credit card number. In addition, the department added: “only fraudsters will require one of those types of digital payments, once they send the money, it probably can’t be recovered.”

However, despite the fact that the FDACS bulletin pointed out the impossibility of tracing the cryptocurrency assets of cyber fraudsters, many companies, such as Velodrome and Curve Finance, have now successfully recovered certain stolen assets thanks to the transparency of Blockchain technology.

Banning Cryptocurrencies is No Longer an Option

On the other hand, on September 5, United States Congressman Brad Sherman, known to be a strong critic of digital assets, acknowledged the rapid growth of the cryptocurrency ecosystem and stated that banning cryptocurrencies “was no longer an option.”

In a recent interview for the Los Angeles Times, Brad Sherman argued that the government “had made a mistake by not banning cryptocurrencies years ago,” when there was less money concentrated in the sector.

“I don’t think we’re going to get to a ban any time soon. Lobbying money and campaign contribution money works, and that’s why we haven’t banned cryptocurrencies. We didn’t ban them initially because we didn’t know they were important, and we don’t ban them now because there’s too much money and power behind them.” Sherman said.

Currently, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization sits at around $1.04 trillion, according to data from CoinMarketCap. The maximum capitalization reached by the cryptocurrency market was approximately $2.9 billion in November last year.

Notably, most US lawmakers, Sherman included, favor implementing strict regulatory policies on cryptocurrencies.

Sherman and lawmakers’ main concerns are that digital assets could pose a “systemic threat to America’s financial network” and could undermine dollar supremacy. In addition, according to Sherman, “criminals” could use Bitcoin and other altcoins in their criminal operations, going unnoticed by the responsible authorities.

A Few Tips to Stop Robocalls and Avoid Phone Scams

The Federal Communications Commission has listed a few tips, which are included below:

1. Don’t answer calls from unknown numbers. If you answer such a call, hang up immediately.
2. Do not respond to any questions, especially those that can be answered with “Yes.”
3. Never give out personal information such as account numbers, Social Security numbers, mother’s maiden names, passwords or other identifying information in response to unexpected calls or if you are at all suspicious.

By Audy Castaneda