Top 3 cryptocurrencies that are faring the best in the 2022 bear market

May 24, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Binance

The list is curated after studying the drawdowns of the top 30 crypto assets by market cap from their record highs.

The crypto market has been in decline over the past six months with its valuation dropping from over $3 trillion in November 2021 to $1.23 trillion in May 2022.

Fears over persistently higher inflation, the Federal Reserve's hawkish response to it, and the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia prompted investors to limit their exposure to riskier assets. Also, their increasing appetite for the safe-havens, such as the U.S. dollar, weighed down demand for some of the top cryptocurrencies and U.S. equities.

As a result, some digital assets, such as Dogecoin (DOGE) and Cardano (ADA), fell by more than 80% from their record highs established last year. At the same time, a few tokens witnessed similar albeit dwarfed declines compared to other assets in the top-30.

These are three among those cryptocurrencies listed in random order.

Monero (-65%)

Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero (XMR) has suffered fewer losses than its top rivals in the space since November 2021.

XMR's price dropped nearly 40% to $186 from its November 2021 peak of around $300. The plunge surfaced as a part of a broader correction move that started after Monero reached its record high in May 2021, near $520, bringing its net downside retracement to around 65%.

*XMR/USD weekly price chart. Source: TradingView*

XMR's limited downside prospects since November 2021 came forth amid reports that it's been used to bypass sanctions. Meanwhile, fears of strict regulations lurking over the crypto market also appeared to have boosted the speculative demand for Monero.

From a technical perspective, XMR has been consolidating in a range defined by its 50-week exponential moving average (50-week EMA; the red wave) around $211 and 200-week EMA (the blue wave) near $167, underscoring a bias conflict.

UNUS SED LEO (-40%)

UNUS SED LEO (LEO), a utility token backed by iFinex — the parent company of BitFinex exchange, has been largely unfazed by broader crypto trends.

The token continued its uptrend even as its rivals in the top-30 moved lower after November 2021; it reached an all-time high of around $8.15 in February 2022 but has since corrected by almost 40%, now trading at around $4.90.

*LEO/USD weekly price chart. Source: TradingView*

Notably, iFinex introduced LEO in a private token sale to raise $1 billion back in 2018. In doing so, the firm wanted to alleviate the cash shortfall it had incurred after the partial fund seizure of its payment processor, Crypto Capital.

IFinex also announced that it would buy back LEO with a minimum of 27% of its consolidated revenues from the previous month, thus removing its supply from the market. In addition, the firm also committed to allocating 95% of the recovered Crypto Capital funds and 80% of the funds from the BitFinex hack in 2016 to buy LEO.

LEO's returns to date now stands around 100%. But the token appears heavily centralized, with a so-called centralized exchange whale still holding around 97% of its net supply, according to data from Santiment.

Binance Coin (-53%)

Like Monero, Binance Coin (BNB) topped out in early May as its price per token crossed over $700. Then in November 2021, the BNB/USD pair almost retested its record high before correcting lower with the rest of the market. In doing so, it wiped out more than half of its valuation, now trading around $325.

*BNB/USD weekly price chart. Source: TradingView*

BNB serves as a utility token inside the Binance ecosystem, including the world's leading crypto exchange by volume and a native blockchain named BNB Chain. The token holders also get to submit proposals via BNB Chain's built-in governance module, which are then voted on.

Other crypto assets

Top cryptos, Bitcoin (BTC), and Ethereum's native token, Ether (ETH), have also fared better than most of their top-ranking rivals in the ongoing bear market.

BTC's price has dropped by 57% to around $29,300 from its November 2021 record high of $69,000. Meanwhile, the second-largest crypto, ETH, has plunged 60% to around $1,975 from above $4,850 in the same period.

Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Polkadot (DOT) are down 65% from their record highs of $55 and $0.00008760, respectively.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

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Altcoin

XMR's bearish setup comes as Monero prepares to launch the testnet version of its hard fork this month.

Monero (XMR) has shown a surprising resilience against the Federal Reserve's hawkish policies that pushed the prices of most of its crypto rivals — including the top dog Bitcoin (BTC) — lower last week.

XMR's price closed the previous week 2.37% higher at $217, data from Binance shows. In comparison, BTC, which typically influences the broader crypto market, finished the week down 11.55%. The second-largest crypto, Ether (ETH), also plunged 11% in the same period.

*XMR/USD vs. BTC/USD vs. ETH/USD weekly price chart. Source: TradingView*

While the crypto market wiped off $163.25 billion from its valuation last week, down nearly 9%, Monero's market cap increased by $87.7 million, suggesting that many traders decided to seek safety in this privacy-focused coin.

XMR near critical support

Monero started the new week with a selloff, with XMR plunging by nearly 4% to around $208 on May 9.

The decline brought the token near its key support level — the 50-week exponential moving average (50-day EMA; the red wave in the chart below) near $214. The wave also coincides with another price floor — the 0.618 Fib line of the Fibonacci retracement graph drawn from the $38-swing low to the $491-swing low.

Interestingly, XMR's price drop is part of a pullback move that began April 21 from about $290. In turn, the reversal to the downside surfaced amid a falling wedge breakout whose upside target comes to be around $490.

That could result in either of these two outcomes: XMR breaks below its support confluence around $214 to test the wedge's upper trendline as support (which also coincides with the token's 200-week EMA near $161.50); OR the token rebounds from the support confluence and continue its move towards the wedge's technical upside target near $490.

The overall crypto market trend looks biased towards bears in a higher interest rate environment. This, coupled with Monero's erratic but consistent positive correlation with Bitcoin, could eventually weigh XMR lower, resulting in a decline toward the wedge's top around $160 in Q2, down about 20% from today's price.

*XMR's correlation with Bitcoin. Source: TradingView*

Strong XMR fundamentals

XMR's bearish setup could see a period of price spikes as Monero inches closer to its tentative hard fork, scheduled for July 16.

A testnet version of the same technical upgrade expects to come out on May 16, according to Monero's GitHub post. The team behind the project has confirmed that the hard fork would improve Monero's network security while cutting fees.

#Monero has a network upgrade (hardfork) on July 16th 2022 at block 2668888.

Privacy and performance will be improved!

The update includes:
Ring sizes will increase from 11 to 16 View tags to speedup wallet/node sync
Multisig fixes
Bulletproof+
+more!#xmr $xmr pic.twitter.com/jZ5ouk1uqo
— John Foss (@johnfoss69) April 17, 2022

Meanwhile, demand for Monero expects to rise higher in 2022 due to its promise of providing anonymity. For instance, XMR emerged as a choice of crypto among ransomware attackers, with a CipherTrade study showing a 500% increase in the token's usage in 2021.

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April 24, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Altcoin

The bullish setup emerges as Monero gears up to undergo a major hard fork in July 2022.

Monero (XMR) price dropped by nearly 10% three days after establishing a week-to-date high around $290 on April 24. Nonetheless, several technical indicators suggest that the XMR/USD pair is poised to resume its uptrend over the next few months.

Falling wedge breakout underway

Notably, XMR's price broke out of its "falling wedge" structure in late March. It continued its move upside in the later daily sessions, with rising volumes indicating bullish sentiment among Monero traders.

Traditional analysts consider falling wedges as bullish reversal patterns, i.e., the price first consolidates within a contracting, descending channel, followed by a strong bounce to the upside.

As a rule, the falling wedge's breakout target comes to be near the level at length equal to the maximum distance between the pattern's lower and upper trendline.

*XMR/USD weekly price chart featuring 'falling wedge' breakout setup. Source: TradingView*

The XMR's falling wedge is up to nearly $250-long. Meanwhile, the structure's breakout point sits around $210. As a result of this, the Monero token's upside target comes to be near $470, up more than 75% from today's price.

Nevertheless, XMR still needs to close above $300, a psychological resistance level, to confirm its move toward the falling wedge target.

Monero hard fork ahead

XMR's bullish outlook also appears in the months leading up to Monero's hard fork.

Notably, Monero will undergo a tentative protocol upgrade in July, preceding a testnet deployment in May. The update aims to increase the ring size from 11 to 16 to ensure that XMR transactions have a larger anonymity set to make it harder to find the transaction source.

#Monero has a network upgrade (hardfork) on July 16th 2022 at block 2668888.

Privacy and performance will be improved!

The update includes:
Ring sizes will increase from 11 to 16 View tags to speedup wallet/node sync
Multisig fixes
Bulletproof+
+more!#xmr $xmr pic.twitter.com/jZ5ouk1uqo
— John Foss (@johnfoss69) April 17, 2022

The hard fork announcement has appeared against the backdrop of rising demand for privacy coins amid geopolitical and economic turmoil.

*Top 10 privacy coin performers in the last seven days. Source: Messari*

Short-term correction risks

XMR's strong fundamentals underpin its bullish wedge setup. Nonetheless, Monero is also at risk of retracement in the short-term.

*XMR/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView*

XMR has corrected lower after testing $278 repeatedly as resistance in the last three days, raising the possibility that it could continue lower. This would present the next downside target appears near $227, coinciding with the 0.236 Fib line of the Fibonacci retracement graph, drawn from $493-swing high to $145-swing low.

Conversely, a decisive move above $278 could have XMR test $320 — the 0.5 Fib line — as its interim upside target.

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Monero crypto of choice as ransomware ‘double extortion’ attacks increase 500%

April 20, 2022 Coin Telegraph

CipherTrace

A surge in ransomware in 2021 has also resulted in a surge in Monero usage as the method of payment as more criminal groups want only XMR.

A new report by blockchain analytics firm CipherTrace highlights the growing role that privacy-focused cryptocurrencies such as Monero are playing in the rising tide of ransomware.

“Current Trends in Ransomware” delves into trends observed during 2021 but was only released this week. The firm revealed there was almost a 500% increase in “double extortion” ransomware attacks from 2020 to 2021. These are cyber attacks in which malicious actors steal a victim’s sensitive data in addition to encrypting it.

The report echoes similar findings from analytics firm Chainalysis which reported that overall ransomware crypto payments topped $600 million for the period.

The new research found that last year saw increasing demands for ransom payment in Monero (XMR), with attackers adding premiums for payments made in Bitcoin (BTC) ranging from 10 to 20%. At least 22 ransomware strains (from an incomplete list of more than 50) only accept XMR payments, and at least seven of them accept both BTC and XMR, it added.

“Higher prices for BTC are most likely seen by the ransomware actors as a premium for dealing with the increased risk in using an easily traceable cryptocurrency like BTC.”

The report cited a Russian-speaking ransomware gang called Everest Group which claimed to have hacked the U.S. Government in October last year. According to CipherTrace, Everest Ransomware is “currently trying to sell the data for $500,000 in XMR.”

Another example was the Russian DarkSide group responsible for the U.S. Colonial Pipeline attack in May 2021. The ransom could be paid in either XMR or BTC, but the cost was higher for the latter.

The REvil ransomware group also switched from demanding BTC to demanding payments in XMR only in early 2020.

Monero is a privacy-based cryptocurrency that uses a combination of technologies such as mixers, ring signatures, and stealth addresses that obfuscate sending and receiving wallets. This is why it has become the primary asset of choice for those demanding ransoms.

For that reason, Monero and other highly privacy-focused cryptocurrencies such as Dash and Zcash have been delisted by some exchanges in countries such as the U.K. and Japan.

The Monero blockchain will be hard forked in July to further enhance its anonymity and privacy properties.

Privacy-Centric Monero Plans for July Hard Fork, Plans Include Ring Signature, Bulletproof Upgrade

April 19, 2022 Bitcoin.com

Monero defies crypto market slump with 10% XMR price rally — what’s next?

April 10, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin

XMR price cup-and-handle pattern fetches a bold $10,000 price prediction for 2023.

Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero (XMR) rallied by nearly 9.5% in the past week compared with the crypto market's decline of 8.5% in the same period. What's more, the XMR/USD pair has broken above a strong, multi-month resistance trendline, hinting at more upside ahead.

XMR price action

XMR's price was down by a modest 0.87% on April 10 from its two-month-high of $245 established a day before. However, the cryptocurrency still outperformed its top rivals, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), on a weekly timeframe.

Speculations about entities using Monero to bypass sanctions could have boosted its appeal among investors. Meanwhile, The American research group Brookings warned last month that Monero, the first in the line of privacy coins, could be "used as part of a sanctions-evasion scheme."

"As a result of the difficulties in tracking and tracing the individuals involved in privacy coin transactions," Brookings explained.

"The IRS has offered payments of $625,000 to those that can crack the privacy protections of Monero, Zcash, and other such cryptocurrencies."

Monero's market capitalization has risen by almost 85% to $4.30 billion since February. While technical indicators suggest that it could grow further in the second quarter.

*XMR market cap since February. Source: CoinMarketCap*

Technical breakout in play

This week, XMR broke above a downward sloping trendline that had been capping its upside attempts since May 2021.

Interestingly, the trendline constitutes what appears to be a bull flag pattern, in combination with a parallel lower trendline acting as support. A basic tenet of bull flags is that they send the price in the direction of its previous uptrend (called "flagpole") after it decisively breaks to the upside.

*XMR/USD weekly price chart featuring 'bull flag' breakout. Source: TradingView*

As a rule, bull flag's upside target is typically the sum of the breakout point and the flagpole's height. That puts XMR en route to almost $480, up almost 110% from today's price near $235.

On longer timeframes, however, independent market analyst Don Yakka argues that XMR price could reach as high as $10,000 if a classic "cup-and-handle" pattern plays out.

*XMR/USD daily price chart featuring cup-and-handle pattern. Source: Don Yakka/TradingView*

Cup-and-handles are bullish continuation patterns with the "cup" representing a U-shaped price trend, including a period of strong correction followed by an equally decisive recovery, and the "handle" resembling a consolidation indicator, such as a "flag" or a "pennant."

A cup-and-handle pattern resolves after the price breaks above its resistance level. The breakout target is measured after calculating the pattern's maximum height and adding it to the breakout point.

Nevertheless, privacy coins like Monero continue to face downside risks due to increasing regulatory pressure from multiple governments around the world.

xmr