ETHUSD: Ethereum Price on Cusp of a Breakout Ahead of August ETH.20 Upgrade

Summary:

Ethereum Price is close to breaking out as investors await for the upcoming ETH 2.0 upgrade of Ethereum's software. Its volatility has slumped to Jan lows

Ethereum Price (ETHUSD) pair is down by about 1.3% as traders continues to wait for the upcoming Ethereum 2.0 upgrade. The pair is trading at $242.73, which is slightly below this week’s high of $247.

Ethereum 2.0 eyed

The biggest driver to Ethereum price these days is the upcoming ETH 2.0 upgrade. This is a process that will improve the original back end of Ethereum and will be the first major update to the system. It will help to make the protocol more secure and faster. In an announcement, Danny Ryan, a launch coordinator of the upgrade said that the preliminary launch date of this upgrade will be on August 4^th. He said:

“After discussions with client teams, the next multi-client testnet (mainnet config including min validator numbers) will have a min genesis time of August 4th.”

Behind the scenes, tests of phase zero (Sapphire) of its test net has been going on since April this year. In the new protocol, ETH mining will shift from a proof-of-work system. Instead, it will be secured by users putting about 32 ETH stake to validate a node. The second test, known as Onyx has been going on since June this year and involves more than 20,000 validators. Another, phase, known as Altona moved from phase zero in June.

ETH 2.0 is the next major event in the cryptocurrency industry after the Bitcoin halving event that took place in May.

Ethereum price forecast

Like Bitcoin, Ethereum price has been boring in recent months. In the past two months, the price has traded within a range of between $215 and $254. As a result, the Average True Range (ATR), which is a good measure of volatility has dropped to the lowest level since January this month.

On the daily chart, the price is slightly above the 78.6% Fibonacci retracement level. It is also above the 50-day and 100-day exponential moving averages. Therefore, because of the low volatility, it means that the price is on a cusp of a break out with key support and resistance levels being at $215 and $255.