- Ethereum’s token looks set for a breakout and could soon top $4,900 (R71,500), research house Fundstrat has forecast.
- Analysts said ether’s market share has grown in recent days, a positive sign for the DeFi-friendly token.
- However, the crypto market is far from predictable, and excitement was building around bitcoin Friday.
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Ether looks set for a breakout and could soon top $4,900 (R71,500, a new record high, according to technical analysts at Fundstrat.
The research house said the ethereum token’s market share has grown in recent days, which its analysts believe is a bullish signal for the world’s second-biggest cryptocurrency.
JPMorgan analysts have said that market dominance is a good gauge of interest in a token, and a rising percentage is a positive signal for the asset’s price.
Ether’s market capitalisation makes up around 18.3% of the broader crypto market, according to Tradingview data. That’s up from around 17.5% at the start of the week.
It has benefited from a broader rally in cryptocurrencies in recent weeks, but has also been boosted by interest in decentralised finance, where it is the most-used token.
“Ethereum looks to be starting to gain on bitcoin after a near one-month period of underperformance throughout September,” Fundstrat said in a note published Thursday evening.
The price of ether was up 1.4% to $3,790 (R55,300) on Friday, according to Bitstamp data.
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Technical analysts look at recent trends in charts to try to discern where an asset might be heading next.
Fundstrat said ether’s growing market share should help it gain ground and break past the $4,000 (R58,400) mark. It said a breakout above $4,030 (R58,800) should add to confidence in ether and could well put the token on its way to top $4,950 (R72,300).
“It’s anticipated that September highs should be exceeded, giving way to acceleration back to new all-time highs,” the analysts wrote. Ether’s previous all time high of $4,350 (R63,500) was reached in May.
However, the cryptocurrency market is far from easy to predict. Excitement was building around bitcoin on Friday, perhaps at the expense of ether, after Bloomberg reported that the US is about to approve a bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund.
Bitcoin was up 3.2% to $59,470 (R868,251) on Friday, according to Bitstamp data. But other data sources, such as CoinGecko, showed the leading cryptocurrency briefly hit $60,000 (R875,989) for the first time since April.
Fundstrat is a financial research company launched in 2014 by Tom Lee, a former chief US equity strategist at JPMorgan.