Ethereum Price Prediction: ETH Pumps 8% Ahead Of Fusaka Upgrade Activation Today

The Ethereum price has surged more than 8% in the past 24 hours to trade at $3,070.40 as of 8:08 a.m. EST on trading volume that has spiked 16% to $29.81 billion. 

That pump by the ETH price comes ahead of the highly-anticipated Fusaka upgrade that will go live later today. Set to activate at the start of epoch 411,392, the upgrade will bring a batch of powerful improvements to the network that are aimed at increasing the scalability, security, and usability of the blockchain.

Among those changes is PeerDAS. Instead of requiring a validator or node to download full blobs of layer-2 data, this upgrade will make it possible for nodes to randomly sample small parts of the data and verify availability. 

There will also be a higher block gas limit introduced. This means that each block on the Ethereum network will be able to store more transactions, contract executions, and layer-2 data. 

Other major upgrades include storage and data structure improvements, as well as protocol level improvements and Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that are aimed at optimizing the blockchain’s overall performance. 

Ahead of the Fusaka upgrade going live, BitMine, the largest ETH treasury firm globally, has acquired more tokens. According to on-chain analytics firm Lookonchain, a wallet, which it has linked to BitMine, has recently withdrawn 30,278 ETH valued at $91.16 million from crypto exchange Kraken. 

That’s after the Ethereum treasury company reportedly bought another 18,345 ETH in the last 24 hours. 

With the ETH price benefiting from the hype around the Fusaka upgrade, can the altcoin leader continue to rise?

Ethereum Price Trades In Consolidation Channel – Breakout Incoming?

Looking at the daily chart for ETH shows that the altcoin has been trading in a sideways range between $2,722 and $3,099 for the last few days.

Daily chart for WETH/USD (Source: GeckoTerminal)

Technical indicators are starting to show early signs of a potential bullish move as ETH attempts a challenge at the $3,099 barrier.

The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) Histogram is positive, a classic indication that momentum favors the bulls in the market. Meanwhile, the MACD line is breaking away above the MACD Signal line, which points to growing bullish momentum.

Buyers have been gaining strength against sellers as well, as suggested by the rising Relative Strength Index (RSI) values over the last couple of days. 

Currently at around 47, the RSI shows that sellers still have a slight upper hand. However, the reading near 50 suggests that control over the Ethereum price can be taken by either bulls or bears.

Key Levels To Watch For ETH

With the growing bullish momentum and the rising RSI values, it seems that a bullish scenario is more likely to play out in the next 48 hours. If this is the case, the Ethereum price could have the strength needed to overcome the $3,099 barrier and flip the upper boundary of the aforementioned sideways channel into support. 

That would be a major development, because the level is also confluent with the 9 and 20 Exponential Moving Averages (EMAs), which have been acting as dynamic support levels that have held ETH down over recent weeks. As such, breaking above the level could clear room for ETH to rise to as high as $3,562 in the short term.

On the other hand, a rejection from the $3,099 mark might lead to a continuation of the recent sideways trading. The Ethereum price may then test the $2,722 support level. In an extreme case, the altcoin might even end up plunging to the $2,316 support if bears are able to overwhelm bulls.

Related News: