Key Takeaways:
- Decentralized app building platform NEAR’s “strong fundamentals” inspired an increase in institutional investments, and attracted a new CEO.
- Despite the fundamental achievements, and hitting a new all-time high, the charts paint a bearish picture.
YEREVAN (CoinChapter.com) – NEAR Protocol has substantially advanced in the previous quarter, prompting Forbes to acknowledge the project as the third-fastest growing ecosystem in the crypto sector. However, the good news for NEAR bulls doesn’t stop there. A crypto analyst with the Twitter handle Crypto Boomer shared a “Megathread” devoted to the Protocol’s recent achievements.
NEAR Protocol’s Recent Achievements
The analyst pointed out that the institutional investors have been paying increasingly more attention to NEAR in Q3 2021, and they “do their research properly.” According to analytical platform Messari, NEAR Protocol takes silver in the list of most commonly held assets by Crypto Funds in Q3.
Moreover, the analyst reminded his followers of the mammoth $800 million grants fund NEAR launched in October. Finally, Crypto Boomer mentioned that NEAR hired a new chief executive in the Twitter thread. Marieke Flament, the former Managing Director at fintech company Circle, took the job.
The appointment looks promising to the NEAR bulls, as Flament is credited with taking Circle to 2 million users. Additionally, she was involved in launching the USDC Stablecoin.
Also read: NEAR Protocol gained 14% after Forbes named it the 3rd fastest-growing crypto ecosystem.
On Dec 20, NEAR Protocol announced that their Simple NIghtshade had gone live. In detail, Simple NIghtshade is a sharding tool. Sharding is a database partitioning technique that could potentially solve the scalability issue, giving the blockchain a higher transaction capacity.
As DeFi grew over the recent years, scalability became one of the main concerns for layer-1 platforms. Unfortunately, its lack plagues many DeFi projects, Ethereum being the first. Simple Nightshade attempts to solve the issue, giving NEAR a boost.
NEAR’s bearish daily chart
NEAR Protocol inspired the bulls with a 35% uptrend on Jan 10-11. It hit a new all-time high of $18.8. However, the rally halted on Jan 12-13, hinting at a possible decline ahead, in sync with CoinChapter’s previous NEAR review. In Thursday’s Asian-Pacific session, the digital asset retested a crucial resistance level and traded $17.60.
As CoinChapter stated in the mentioned report, NEAR formed a Rising Wedge on the daily chart. The formation consisted of two converging trendlines with a positive slope. Rising Wedge is a bearish reversal setup; thus, it predicts a looming downtrend.
NEAR retested the Wedge’s resistance trendline on Jan 11 and again on Jan12, subsequently halting the rally. However, the formation suggests the decline could result in a support trendline retest.
Also read: Selloff risks persist for the NEAR price as it drops 20% in just a day.
Despite NEAR’s strengthening fundamentals, the charts looked bearish. However, a temporary setback is not a ‘nail in the coffin.’ The upcoming sessions will show if NEAR can defy the bearish technicals and break out.
