ETH/USD paralyzed in a narrow range as Ethereum dev team proceed with Casper tests

• ETH/USD is sitting in a range amid low trading activity on cryptocurrency market.
• Ethereum developers added Casper code to  Substrate blockchain.

Ethereum, the second largest coin by market value, is sandwiched between $240 and $220 amid depressingly low trading activity and non-existent volatility. ETH/USD has settled at $230 by press time, off Monday’s low of $227. Ethereum’s current market value is $23.5B, while the average daily trading volume is registered at $1.5B, in line with mid-term average figures.  

What’s going on

Meanwhile, Ethereum developers continue working on its Casper update. They integrated its early version into   Substrate blockchain platform and released the code on GitHub on Monday. This upgrade is called Shasper and it contains both shadring (in-house scaling solution) and a switch to a  proof-of-stake consensus known as Casper.

“Shasper is combination of Casper and sharding. Once it lands, we should see vast improvements in terms of ethereum’s transaction throughput,” Wei Tang, the developer leading the Parity integration, explained in the interview with CoinDesk.

The expert emphasised that the  Substrate integration  is a “basic skeleton” that needs to be tested.

Ethereum’s technical picture

From the intraday perspective, ETH/USD is capped by $231.40. This local resistance is created by SMA50, 1-hour. Once this area is cleared, the bulls will be able to take prices towards $235.40   handle (50.0% Fibo retracement and Monday’s high). The ultimate resistance is seen at $240 – this level stopped the bulls on Sunday and triggered the sell-off.

On the downside, the local support is created by $228.80 (SMA100, 1-hour). If it is broken, the sell-off may be extended towards $225 (SMA200, 1-hour) and to $220.

ETH/USD, 1-hour chart