Ethereum price has gone nowhere in the past few days as investors eye the upcoming interest rates decision by the Federal Reserve. The ETH token is trading at $2,805, which is slightly below this week’s high of $2,883. Its market cap has dropped to about $340 billion, meaning that investors have lost over $160 billion of value recently.
Ethereum April review
Ethereum had a relatively uneventful performance in April. The biggest announcement was that the developers were postponing Ethereum merge date from June this year to the third quarter. Analysts expect that the current network and the Beacon Chain will now merge in August or September.
The merge delay was a disappointment to many people. However, many investors believe that it was a necessary action because of the significance of the upgrade. Historically, a single era in a blockchain network like Ethereum has led to major hacks.
Read more about how to buy Ethereum.
Meanwhile, like other chains, Ethereum saw an outflow of total value locked (TVL) in its network. In the past 30 days, the TVL has dropped by more than 11% to about $110 billion. It nonetheless managed to grow its dominance in the industry to 55% as other chains saw a deeper decline. For example, Solana and Fantom declined by over 25%.
Ethereum’s price action also mirrored that of other assets. In April, the Nasdaq 100 declined by more than 18%. In the same period, US bond yields continued rising as the sell-off continued. Bond yields have an inverse relationship with prices. Indeed, in April, the yield curve managed to invert to the lowest level since 2007.
This price action was mostly because of the words by Fed officials. In speeches and statements, officials like Jerome Powell and Mary Daly hinted that the bank will continue hiking rates. Expectations are that the bank will increase rates by 0.50% and start quantitative tightening.
Ethereum price prediction
The four-hour chart shows that the ETH price has been in a steady downward trend recently. It has managed to move below the standard pivot point and the 25-day moving average. Also, the Relative Strength Index has moved slightly below the neutral level at 50.
Therefore, I believe that the Ethereum price will decline modestly in the first part of May and then start bouncing back since the hawkish Fed situation has already been priced in. Therefore, a bounce to $3,200 can’t be ruled out.