When will the crypto winter end? Guessing at the rates of bitcoin and major altcoins

The bankruptcy of Core Scientific, the development of the FTX case, the results of the audit of Binance – these and other events of the week affected the value of digital assets. Where will all this lead? When will the bearish trend end? Bitcoin For the week from December 16 to December 23, 2022, the price of BTC changed between $16,293 and $17,525. In other words, fluctuations were within 7%. At the same time, the main volatility was observed on the first day of the period, December 16, when bitcoin fell by 4.2% per day: Source: tradingview.com The drawdown at the end of last week is associated with the general news background around crypto exchanges. They took a hit to their reputation after the collapse of FTX. Moreover, the auditing company Mazars informed that it will temporarily not work with cryptocurrency clients.. Not so long ago, this organization provided an opinion on the verification of Binance for the presence of the necessary cash reserves.. And although nothing criminal was revealed, Mazars employees noted that the audit was not carried out in the most optimal conditions: access to a significant part of the information was limited. Interestingly, the news about the bankruptcy of a major Bitcoin miner, Core Scientific, did not have a particular impact on the value of the first cryptocurrency.. On December 21, when the news broke, BTC fell by 0.44%, and the next day even less – by 0.02%. Against the backdrop of a protracted crypto winter, some investors are wondering: is it worth it now to buy the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization? There are interesting statistics on the topic: over the past four halvings, on average one and a half years before the next block reward reduction, BTC has reached minimum price levels. A year and a half after the halving, BTC hit its new all-time high. Does this mean that history must repeat itself? No. But statistics are stubborn things. By the way, now there is just about a year and a half left before the next halving. Assuming that the correlation of dynamics and emission reduction turns out to be correct, then by the end of 2025 BTC should rise in price above $69,000. Of course, the assumption may turn out to be wrong in the light of a protracted bearish trend.. In any case, according to Blockchain.com surveys, more than 40% of investors still plan to buy cryptocurrencies in 2023. From the point of view of technical analysis, according to the daily chart, Bitcoin is currently in the sideways trend.. We can talk specifically about the fact that the bull market began after the price breaks the $18,400 mark.. The nearest resistance level is around $17,000, the nearest support level is the low of the current week of December 19 – $16,293. Source: tradingview.com On the other hand, the “fear and greed” index is not in favor of growth. As of December 23, it is equal to 27 units, which shows the unwillingness of investors to make purchases. ethereum. ETH price fluctuations were slightly higher than BTC over the past week and amounted to about 10%. Source: tradingview.com General dynamics are generally similar to Bitcoin. But what are the prospects for ether? The transition to a new consensus algorithm (PoS) in the fall of 2022 was ambiguously perceived by investors and users. In September, the coin was worth more than $2,000, and at the moment it is just over $1,200.. This can be partly explained by the formation of the cost of the coin due to the costs of the miners.. The purchase of expensive equipment, its maintenance, payment for electricity – these and many other expenses were included in the cost of new coins.. Due to the abandonment of the PoW consensus algorithm, the economic pricing model has changed. And the transition to PoS caused rejection of some trading platforms. For example, P2P platform Paxful has announced it is phasing out Ethereum, citing “lack of decentralization” as one of the reasons. Also, the effectiveness of the EIP-1559 innovation is not entirely clear.. It should make Ethereum deflationary by burning tokens. However, the model is built in such a way that burning requires a certain activity in the network.. Plus, the costs fall on the shoulders of users. In the current market conditions, many investors have left the market. Private capital is not enough in such circumstances. As a result, instead of burning, the system is filled with a new supply of coins, some analysts say. CryptoQuant Experts Are Confident Ethereum Will Have a Significant Sale in the Near Future. As the main argument, they cite the fact that 12% of the total amount of ethers is currently blocked. They will be unlocked in March when the Shanghai hard fork is released. Analysts also point to a decrease in supply (and hence liquidity) on the exchanges. According to technical analysis, Ethereum has shown a decline in value in four of the last five months (October was the exception). It is too early to say that the bearish trend has changed to bullish. A positive moment will be the fixing of the coin above the resistance level of $1,352.2. If the price of ether falls below $1,150.6, then there is a chance that the price will continue to decline. Source: tradingview.com Solana Separately, it is worth noting the volatility of Sol: the cryptocurrency has fallen in price over the past week following bitcoin and ether. At the same time, the largest drop was also observed last Friday, December 16. On that day, the coin collapsed immediately by 12.88%. The range of price fluctuations for the week was more than 17.5%, from $11.67 to $14.17. Source: tradingview.com The collapse on December 16 is connected both with the refusal of Mazars from cryptocurrency clients and with another hack based on Solana. Raydium's AMM protocol suffered this time. However, now there is more of a lateral movement, rather than a continuation of the fall.. In addition, there is good news for the project. According to Delphi Digital, the platform is second only to Ethereum in terms of trading volume in the NFT market. And the total number of applications on Solana, according to Messari, continues to grow.. On one GitHub, the number of new developments that do not repeat each other has increased by more than 100%. Unfortunately, Solana's success in certain areas is not yet a serious catalyst for the growth of the price of its Sol token.. The coin is stunningly far from the all-time high of almost $260 that was showcased in November 2021. But to a historical minimum much less (8%). From the standpoint of technical analysis, it will be possible to talk about a change in trend for Sol after overcoming the resistance level around $15. But the historical low of $10.92 is still a support level. Source: tradingview.com In general, it is worth saying that altcoin price charts follow the movements of BTC. The only difference is that the corrections for them are even stronger. There is no need to talk about the end of the bearish trend in the crypto industry yet. This material and the information in it does not constitute individual or other investment advice.. The opinion of the editors may not coincide with the opinions of the author, analytical portals and experts.