Ethereum Price Analysis: ETH/USD to recover towards $140.00 if 134.40 is broken

• ETH/USD has been recovering after a sharp sell-off on Monday.
• Important resistance is created by the upper line of the 1-hour Bollinger Band at $134.40.

Ethereum, the second-largest digital asset with the current market value of $14.5 billion and an average daily trading volume of $11.2 billion has gained 1.5% in the recent 24 hours and settled at $132.00 by the time of writing. Despite the upside momentum, the coin is still locked in a range. 

DeFi applications impacts negatively on Ethereum blockchain

The growing popularity of decentralized finance applications (DeFi) has a negative impact on regular Ethereum transactions. This trend was revealed by a research startup Covalent in the recent report.
 
The company’s co-founder, Ganesh Swami, pointed out the growing share of transactions related to DeFi application transactions as compared to transactions with ETH and ERC-20 tokens. Thus, in February, the total value funds locked on smart contracts exceeded $1 billion.
 
As DeFi’s space expanded with the development of crypto-landing platforms such as Maker and Synthentix, complex transactions began to absorb the transactions space of ERC 20 and ETH in blocks.
 
Currently, the cumulative share of complex transactions has already reached 30% – 35% of the total block space. ETH transactions fell from more than 99% at the end of 2015 to about 75%-80% of total transactions value, Swami said.

ETH/USD: Technical picture

On the intraday charts, ETH/USD recovery is capped by $133.00. This resistance is created by a combination of SMA100, SMA200 and the upper line of the Bollinger Band on the 1-hour chart. Once it is out cleared, the upside is likely to gain traction with the next focus on $134.40 ( the upper line of 4-hour Bollinger Band) and psychological $140.00. The next resistance comes at $142.00, which is the highest level since March 27.

On the downside, the first support is created by psychological $130.00 with SMA50 1-hour located right below this level.  A sustainable move below this area will increase the bearish pressure and bring Monday’s low of $124.17 into focus.

ETH/USD 1-hour chart