Ethereum  price analysis: ETH/USD settles at $220 as Constantinople update is postponed

• ETH/USD has returned to $220 handle after a short-lived recovery.
• Ethereum’s dev team postpones the launch of Constantinople update.

Ethereum, the second largest coin by market value, has returned to a critical $220 handle, unable to gain enough momentum for a bullish breakthrough. The coin is nearly 1.5% lower on a day-on-day basis and unchanged since the beginning of Friday. Ethereum’s current market value is $22.9B, while the average daily trading volume is registered at $1.4B, in line with long-term average figures.  

What’s going on

Ethereum developers delayed the launch of Constantinople update on the test network Ropsten citing the desire to give nod operators – both individuals and companies – more time to address the vulnerability in one of Constantinople upgrades.

“Via community decision, we’ve delayed the #Ethereum Ropsten testnet Constantinople hard fork by 1 epoch to block #4230000 (+5 days) to allow clients to implement, test and release an update to CREATE2, countering a recently found EVM DoS attack vector,” Ethereum dev teal lead Péter Szilágyi wrote in his Twitter account.

Ethereum’s technical picture

From the intraday perspective, ETH/USD is capped by a combination of 1-hour SMAs and the broken upside trendline clustered right above the current price. This area is likely to serve as a strong resistance unless we have a convincing market catalyst for a decisive breakthrough towards $235.40  handle (50.0% Fibo retracement and October 1 high) and $250.

On the downside, the first support is created by $214 (October 3 low). If it is broken, the sell-off will gain traction and take the price to the psychological $200.

ETH/USD, 1-hour chart