Ethereum price started a fresh recovery wave above the $4,450 zone but failed. ETH is still struggling and might slide below the $4,220 zone.

• Ethereum is still struggling to recover above the $4,400 zone.
• The price is trading below $4,400 and the 100-hourly Simple Moving Average.
• There is a short-term declining channel forming with resistance at $4,310 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via Kraken).
• The pair could start a decent increase if there is a close above the $4,350 level in the near term.

Ethereum Price Remains At Risk

Ethereum price started a recovery wave after it formed a base above the $4,200 zone, like Bitcoin. ETH price was able to climb above the $4,350 and $4,400 resistance levels before the bears appeared.

The recent low was formed at $4,233 and the price is now consolidating losses. There was a minor increase above the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the recent decline from the $4,491 swing high to the $4,233 low. However, the bulls face an uphill task near $4,320.

Besides, there is a short-term declining channel forming with resistance at $4,310 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD. Ethereum price is now trading below $4,320 and the 100-hourly Simple Moving Average. On the upside, the price could face resistance near the $4,300 level.

The next key resistance is near the $4,320 level. The first major resistance is near the $4,360 level or the 50% Fib retracement level of the recent decline from the $4,491 swing high to the $4,233 low. A clear move above the $4,360 resistance might send the price toward the $4,420 resistance. An upside break above the $4,420 resistance might call for more gains in the coming sessions. In the stated case, Ether could rise toward the $4,500 resistance zone or even $4,550 in the near term.

More Downside In ETH?

If Ethereum fails to clear the $4,360 resistance, it could start a fresh decline. Initial support on the downside is near the $4,260 level. The first major support sits near the $4,220 zone.

A clear move below the $4,220 support might push the price toward the $4,200 support. Any more losses might send the price toward the $4,160 support level in the near term. The next key support sits at $4,120.

Technical Indicators

Hourly MACD – The MACD for ETH/USD is gaining momentum in the bearish zone.

Hourly RSI – The RSI for ETH/USD is now below the 50 zone.

Major Support Level – $4,220

Major Resistance Level – $4,360

For weeks, Shiba Inu’s sideways movement provides nothing but unclear direction. However, a surprise rally might be closer than most people think, according to the current chart setup.

SHIB has been consolidating within a symmetrical triangle formation, a technical pattern frequently linked to strong breakout potential, which explains why SHIB has been trading between support and resistance levels that are progressively convergent since July. Right now, the price is firmly contained within the triangle, indicating a decrease in volatility and increasing pressure. Usually, a decisive action is taken when SHIB enters such compressionary periods. Importantly, SHIB is still adhering to both trendlines and hasn’t broken out of the formation. By itself, this maintains the potential for an upside breakout.

SHIB is still below important moving averages, such as the 200-day SMA, from a technical standpoint, indicating that the overall trend is still bearish. On the other hand, unexpected rallies frequently happen when traders least expect them and sentiment is low. Stop orders and short-term bullish momentum could be triggered by a clear break above the triangle’s upper boundary, which would push SHIB back toward resistance levels close to $0.0000130, and possibly higher if volume supports the move.

On the downside, SHIB runs the risk of retesting the $0.0000115 region if the triangle support is lost. The pattern’s price compression, however, indicates that the market is currently waiting for a trigger.

The main conclusion is that SHIB is still in its symmetrical triangle. The potential for an unexpected rally cannot be disregarded as long as it stays inside. Because the pattern is likely to move quickly once the breakout occurs, traders should closely monitor volume spikes and daily closes around its boundaries.

Bitcoin becoming bearish

Recent price movements for Bitcoin have rekindled concerns that the current bull market may be nearing its end. After testing resistance levels above $120,000 and continuing to rise for months, Bitcoin has now fallen below a crucial technical level: the 50-day exponential moving average (EMA). It is possible that the market is transitioning from a bullish phase to a longer bearish one as a result of this breakdown.

As a short- to midterm trend indicator, the 50 EMA has been used historically. Whenever the price gets close to the line, Bitcoin tends to bounce back and stay above it during strong uptrends. But the most recent move below this support, along with the low buying volume, indicates that the bullish momentum is waning.

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The 200-day EMA, at about $104,000, which frequently serves as the boundary between bull and bear cycles, is the next key area to keep an eye on. Traders may perceive the beginning of a more significant correction if Bitcoin closes several sessions below the 50 EMA and is unable to swiftly recover it. Increased selling pressure would probably result from such a situation, with downside targets extending toward the $106,000-$104,000 range. A bear market would be even more strongly confirmed if the 200-day EMA were to break below.

The bull market isn’t quite over. In comparable configurations, Bitcoin has previously demonstrated resilience by regaining the 50 EMA and starting to rise again. The market is currently at a turning point: Either Bitcoin maintains its current levels and rises above the $113,000 resistance, or it runs the risk of plummeting as sentiment wanes.

XRP’s summer rally ends?

The strong uptrend that propelled XRP earlier this summer may be coming to an end, as the token has formally broken down from its symmetrical triangle pattern. Bulls should be concerned about this technical breakdown, because triangles are frequently used as continuation or reversal setups. XRP’s failure to maintain support within the formation, in this instance, is bearish and may pave the way for further losses.

Not only has XRP fallen out of the triangle, but it is also perilously close to its 100-day moving average, at the moment trading around $2.81. The next important area, the 200-day moving average, is located at about $2.50 if this support fails. In the past, bullish and bearish market structures have been distinguished by this level. If there was a clear break below, more aggressive selling would probably follow.

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There is a greater chance that XRP will fall closer to the psychological $2 mark if momentum keeps waning and it is unable to swiftly recover lost ground. Losing $2 would be a significant change in attitude and might undo a lot of the gains made in the previous few months. The most recent move was accompanied by declining volume, so there isn’t much proof that buyers are acting quickly to purchase at the current prices.

This breakdown, viewed more broadly, puts XRP in a vulnerable position. What was formerly a robust upward trend driven by bullish momentum may now turn into a longer-term downward trend. The outlook remains dominated by downside risks until XRP can rise back above $3.00 and invalidate this bearish move.

XRP’s technical structure has weakened, and a decline toward $2 or even lower is very likely unless there is a swift recovery. The market now awaits the conclusion of the rally, or the ability of bulls to hold onto key support areas.

The following is a guest post and opinion from Evin McMullen, Co-founder & CEO at Billions.Network.

ZK Won’t Save Us: Why Digital Identity Must Stay Plural

Zero-knowledge (ZK)-wrapped identity was lauded as a silver bullet to solve everything about presenting yourself online—providing verifiable, privacy-preserving proof of personhood without the need to trust governments, platforms, or biometric databases.

But as Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin argued in June, encryption alone can’t fix “architecture-level” coercion. When identity becomes rigid, centralized, and one-size-fits-all, pseudonymity dies and coercion becomes inevitable.

The risks Vitalik raised in his recent post are not just theoretical. They are the inevitable outcome of systems that try to impose a single, fixed identity on a pluralistic internet. One account per person sounds fair—until it becomes mandatory. Add ZK proofs to the mix, and all you’ve done is encrypt the shackles.

Digital identity is becoming an important issue for governments, as shown by the G7 commissioning a report last year to inform policy, and the EU’s summit in Berlin in June to assess its regulatory framework for electronic identities and trust services.

The Limits of ZK Alone

Zero-knowledge proofs allow users to prove statements—age, residency, uniqueness—without revealing underlying personal data by using cryptographic methods. It’s like showing a sealed envelope that everyone can confirm holds the right answer, without anyone ever opening it. In theory, this should support privacy. But as Vitalik rightly argues, the problem is not what the proofs hide, but what the system assumes.

Most ZK-ID schemes rely on a core design principle: one identity per person. That might make sense for voting or preventing bots. But in real life, people operate across many social contexts—work, family, online, etc.—that don’t map neatly onto a single ID. Enforcing a one-person, one-ID model, even with ZK wrappers, creates a brittle system that’s easy to weaponize.

In such a system, coercion becomes a trivial matter. Employers, governments, or apps can demand that a user reveal all their linked identities. Pseudonymity becomes impossible, especially when IDs are reused across applications or anchored to immutable credentials. Even the illusion of unlinkability breaks down under pressure from machine learning, correlation attacks, or good old-fashioned power.

What began as a privacy tool becomes surveillance infrastructure, but with a nicer interface.

Identity Isn’t the Problem; Uniformity Is

ZK-wrapped systems don’t fail because ZK is flawed; they fail because the surrounding architecture clings to an outdated concept of identity that’s singular, static, and centralized. That’s not how humans operate, and it’s not how the internet works.

The alternative is pluralism. Instead of one global ID that follows you everywhere, imagine a model where you appear differently to each app, platform, or community—provably human and trustworthy, but contextually unique. Your credentials are local, not universal. You’re verifiable without being traceable. And no one, not even you, can be coerced into revealing everything about yourself.

This isn’t a fantasy. It’s already working.

Profile DIDs and the Case for Context-Based Identity

One approach already in production uses per-app Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) so that even colluding platforms can’t link a user’s personas.

It’s a structural fix, not just a cryptographic one. Instead of building global registries that bind people to a single identity, we can anchor trust in pluralistic models featuring decentralized reputation graphs, selective disclosure, unlinkable credentials, and ZK proofs that enforce contextual verification rather than static identifiers.

This system is already used by over 9,000 projects, including TikTok and Deutsche Bank. And it’s not just for humans. The same framework powers Billions Network’s DeepTrust initiative, extending verifiable identity and reputation to AI agents—a necessity in an internet increasingly shaped by autonomous systems.

Don’t Fight Surveillance With Better Locks

Some see identity as a necessary evil—a way to prevent misinformation or spam. But good identity design doesn’t require surveillance. It just requires context.

We don’t need one ID to rule them all. We need systems that let people prove what’s needed, when needed, without turning every interaction into a permanent record. Want to prove you’re not a bot? Fine. Prove uniqueness. Want to prove you’re over 18? Great. Do it without handing over your birthdate, postcode, and biometric template.

Crucially, we must resist the urge to equate compliance with centralization. Systems that use coercive biometrics, rigid registries, or global databases to enforce identity may look efficient. But they introduce potentially catastrophic risks: irreversible breaches, discrimination, exclusion, and even geopolitical misuse. Biometric data can’t be rotated. Static IDs can’t be revoked. Centralized models cannot be made safe; they can only be made obsolete.

Vitalik Is Right, But the Future Is Already Here

Vitalik’s essay warns of a future where identity systems, even when built on the best cryptography, accidentally entrench the very harms they set out to prevent. We share that concern. But we also believe there’s a way forward: one that doesn’t compromise on privacy, enforce uniformity, or turn people into nodes on a global registry.

That path is pluralistic and decentralized, and it’s already live.

Let’s not waste our best cryptographic tools on defending broken ideas. Instead, let’s build the systems that match how people actually live and how we want the internet to work.

The future of digital identity doesn’t need to be universal. It simply needs to be human.

Mentioned in this article

This is a daily analysis by CoinDesk analyst and Chartered Market Technician Omkar Godbole.

Bitcoin BTC$107,620.56 has breached key support levels in a sign of increasing bearish momentum that suggests a risk of a slide to $100,000.

The leading cryptocurrency by market value fell 6.5% in August, ending the four-month winning streak as the U.S.-listed spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) bled $751 million, according to data source SoSoValue.

The recent price drop saw bitcoin break below several key support levels, including the Ichimoku cloud, and the 50-day and 100-day simple moving averages (SMAs). It also pierced crucial horizontal support zones formed by the May high of $111,965 and the December high of $109,364, according to the daily chart sourced from TradingView.

These breakdowns underscore growing market weakness, confirming a bearish shift in key momentum indicators such as the Guppy Multiple Moving Average (GMMA) and the MACD histogram.

The short-term exponential moving average (EMA) band of the GMMA (green) has crossed below the longer-term band (red), signaling a clear bearish momentum shift. Meanwhile, the weekly MACD histogram has dropped below zero, indicating a transition from a bullish to a bearish trend.

Together, these signals indicate a likelihood of a sustained sell-off, potentially driving the price down to the 200-day simple moving average (SMA) at $101,366, and possibly to the $100,000 mark.

The negative technical outlook aligns with seasonal trends, which show September historically as a bearish month for bitcoin. Since 2013, BTC has delivered an average return of -3.49%, closing lower in eight of the past 12 September months, according to data from Coinglass.

As for bulls, overcoming the lower high of $113,510 set on Aug. 28 is crucial to negating the bearish outlook.

• Support: $105,240 (the 38.2% Fib retracement of the April-August rally), $101,366 (the 200-day SMA), $100,000.
• Resistance: $110,756 (the lower end of the Ichimoku cloud), $113,510 (the lower high), $115,938 (the 50-day SMA).

Bitcoin’s $107,800 Line In The Sand: Support Or Breakdown Ahead?

In a QuickTake post on CryptoQuant, Yonsei_dent shares some technical insight into the Bitcoin market, highlighting several important price levels at the moment. The analyst explains that Bitcoin’s current market price is sitting almost directly on top of the Short-Term Holder (STH) Realized Price, an important metric that tracks the average cost basis of recently acquired coins.

Notably, investors holding coins for 1 week–1 month have an average cost basis of $116,400, while the 1–3 month cohort sits lower at $112,600. Meanwhile, holders in the 3–6 month range show a significantly cheaper cost basis of $93,400. When all these groups of short-term holders are weighted by realized capitalization, the blended average STH cost basis is calculated at around $107,800, i.e., about 1.45%% below present market prices.

This alignment makes the $107,800 level a critical line in the sand, so to speak, for the current bullish structure. If Bitcoin remains above this threshold, short-term holders will remain close to breakeven, reducing the likelihood of widespread panic selling. However, if Bitcoin bulls lose this support zone, many new market entrants will fall into loss territory, increasing the potential for a heightened selling pressure.

In such a bearish scenario, market participants would likely turn their attention toward the $93,400 support area, where the 3–6 month cost basis resides. This level could provide the next significant cushion, given that investors in this cohort are sitting on healthier profits and are likely to display stronger holding conviction.

However, it’s worth stating that the situation is not outright bearish. A decisive recovery above $112,600–$116,400, representing the cost bases of 1–3 months and 1 week–1 month holders, respectively, could restore market confidence and reignite bullish momentum towards a potential return to the present market ATH.

Bitcoin Price Overview

At press time, Bitcoin trades at $109,400 following a 5.65% devaluation in the past month. Meanwhile, the daily trading volume is down by 27.02% and valued at $50.48 billion. With a market cap of $2.15 trillion, Bitcoin remains the largest cryptocurrency and fifth-largest global asset.

Ethereum has most likely entered a corrective phase, which could be the beginning of the end of the bull market. Ethereum has been gradually declining after reaching a peak of about $4,800, and the price action is displaying the first discernible signs of weakness since July.

Given that trading volume has decreased in comparison to earlier in the rally, the decline suggests that market momentum may be waning. Ethereum corrections following sharp rallies have historically tested important moving averages, and the 26-day EMA is currently the first crucial level to keep an eye on. A clean rebound prior to testing this zone would be a more convincing sign that buyers are still in control, but a drop toward this line would indicate a continuation of short-term selling pressure.

The larger bullish structure would hold up if ETH could bounce back above recent highs, rather than tagging the 26 EMA, indicating that this move is merely a brief cooling off. With the next layers of support located close to the 50 EMA and psychological round levels around $4,000, additional downside may become possible if the 26 EMA breaks decisively.

The more general question is whether the upward momentum of the cycle will end with this correction. Since long-term moving averages are still sloping upward, and Ethereum is currently trading comfortably above key support lines, it appears that the bull market is still going strong. But as Ethereum continues to decline, traders may grow increasingly wary, particularly as the market closes out derivative positions.

Shiba Inu at risk

Shiba Inu is once again close to adding a zero to its price. Following weeks of consolidation within an ascending triangle pattern, SHIB is currently close to losing the lower range, which could lead to more severe declines.

The failure of SHIB to produce significant upward momentum is seen clearly on the daily chart. The token is continuing to retest the support line, rather than breaking higher, which indicates a weakening setup, even though the ascending triangle formation typically leans bullish. With today’s rejection, the likelihood of a breakdown is gradually increasing, and each bounce has been weaker than the one before.

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Due to the absence of strong support zones until much lower levels, the move may accelerate rapidly, if SHIB breaks below the triangle’s support. SHIB would most likely be forced to add another zero to its price as a result of such a decline, returning it to valuations not seen since the early summer.

Lower trading volumes and the absence of whale-driven support both increase the descending momentum and lessen the likelihood of a recovery. The risk is increased by the fact that SHIB’s performance is still trailing, leading cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin, which have at least maintained stronger trends.

XRP checks in

XRP is not feeling that well, as the asset is close to entering a critical state. The token is currently declining and in danger of breaking below its 50-day exponential moving average (EMA) after failing to maintain momentum above $3. Although this level has historically been used as a temporary buffer, the current situation indicates that it might not last for very long.

As XRP records a string of red candles, the market’s inability to maintain bullish sentiment is putting pressure on the 50 EMA. The next strong support is located much deeper in the $2.70-$2.75 range, and the $2.40 region, which is anchored by the 200 EMA if this level fails. A breakdown of this kind would wipe out most of XRP’s recent gains and expose the token to a possible retest nearer $2.00, a psychological level that will decide whether the larger bullish cycle holds up.

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Curiously, volume data presents a somewhat different picture, even though price action appears fragile. Indicating that bears are not fully committing to the sell-off, trading volumes have been continuously dropping during the downward move. This lack of conviction allows for a potential rebound, but XRP runs the risk of crashing lower toward significant support levels in the absence of an abrupt spike in demand.

XRP needs to regain the $3.00 mark with significant buying pressure if bulls wish to regain control. If this is not done, there may be a chance for a more severe correction, with $2.00 acting as the final key level before sentiment turns sharply against the asset.

Author

Julia Smith

Author

Julia Smith

About Author

Julia is an experienced editor with a passion for covering a wide variety of beats. She loves all things politics and regularly covers regulatory updates on emerging technology here for Crypto News.

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August 18, 2025

The U.S. Treasury is calling on the public to provide feedback required by the GENIUS Act on how the government could help prevent “illicit finance risks” tied to digital assets, per a Monday press release from the government department.

U.S. Treasury Puts The GENIUS Act In Action

According to the August 18 notice, the U.S. Treasury is seeking comment from interested members of the public at large on how financial institutions can push back on unlawful crypto use.

“This request for comment offers the opportunity for interested individuals and organizations to provide feedback on innovative or novel methods, techniques, or strategies that regulated financial institutions use, or could potentially use, to detect illicit activity involving digital assets,” the U.S. Treasury states.

“As required by the GENIUS Act, Treasury will use public comments to inform research on the effectiveness, costs, privacy and cybersecurity risks, and other considerations related to these tools,” the press release continues.

Scott Bessent Shares His Take In New Statement

Following news of the request for comment, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent praised implementing the GENIUS Act as “essential” to “securing American leadership in digital assets.”

“Stablecoins will expand dollar access for billions across the globe and lead to a surge in demand for U.S. Treasuries, which back stablecoins,” Bessent said.

“It’s a win-win-win for everyone involved: stablecoin users, stablecoin issuers, and the U.S. Treasury Department,” he added.

U.S. President Donald Trump signed the crypto legislation into law last month, much to the appeasement of key players in the blockchain sector.

“Let me say, the entire crypto community, for years you were mocked and dismissed and counted out,” the president continued. “You were counted out as little as a year and a half ago—but this signing is a massive validation.”

The move reinforces that the GENIUS Act isn’t just symbolic — it’s now becoming the framework for America’s digital asset strategy.