On November 3, IOTA led gains among the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap as developers began voting for the Rebased upgrade.
IOTA (IOTA) rose 46% over the past 24 hours to a six-month high of $0.504, pushing its market cap past $1.7 billion at the time of writing. The gain extended monthly gains to more than 350%, while daily trading volume rose 83% and hovered above $705 million at the time of writing.
The altcoin’s recent price rally was supported by a jump in futures open interest. According to MintGlassOpen interest in the futures market reached a record high of $87.89 million, more than triple last week’s low of $26.27 million.
Why is IOTA increasing?
IOTA took action after developers opened the voting process to upgrade the IOTA L1 mainnet to the new Rebased protocol.
[Governance] 🚨#IOTA Rebased vote is now open! 🚨 Vote until Dec 16th to shape the future of the network. Should we adopt the new L1 protocol with Move-based smart contracts, full decentralization, staking & enhanced tokenomics? Let your voice be heard! 🗳️ https://t.co/5tby6mWFfb pic.twitter.com/O1PmSVt4mz
— IOTA (@iota) December 2, 2024
Rebased is IOTA’s biggest upgrade yet and introduces multiple features such as the ability to earn IOTA staking rewards, an initial target inflation rate between 6% and 7%, support for deploying Move-based smart contracts, and full decentralization of the IOTA ledger.
IOTA’s rebased upgrade is expected to reduce transaction fees, introduce an adaptive fee burning mechanism and implement sponsored transactions to abstract transaction fees.
The voting process for the Rebased upgrade will last seven days and end on December 9, while the counting process will last another seven days and end on December 16.
IOTA’s rally comes as the altcoin market gains momentum proven according to the Altcoin Season Index at 81, indicating that many altcoins are outperforming Bitcoin. This increase corresponds with increased optimism in the cryptocurrency market Crypto Fear and Greed Index reached 76, indicating strong bullish sentiment prevailing in the market.
What is next for IOTA award?
Following IOTA’s recent surge, analysts are now predicting more gains for the altcoin
According to According to pseudo-anonymous analysts Team LAMBO Charts, IOTA has broken out of a major falling wedge pattern, a bullish signal in technical analysis, and has also broken through a major resistance level at $0.40.
They predict that the altcoin could rise to $0.70 in the short term, followed by a rally to $1, with a much more bullish medium-term target of $2.60 – which would represent a 430% upside from the current price level.
Meanwhile, another market commentator observed that IOTA has broken out after two years of accumulation. He expects further gains for the altcoin as whales start converting recent gains from other altcoins into IOTA.
He shared a three-day price chart and predicted that IOTA could rise to $3.50 provided it successfully breaches the $1 level in the near term.
IOTA could withdraw before the next step
On the daily chart, IOTA has risen above both the 50-day and 200-day exponential moving averages at $0.1914 and $0.1710 respectively, which have recently formed a golden cross, which will be a major upside for the altcoin in the near future can mean.
However, the Relative Strength Index and Stochastic Oscillator have reached overbought levels, indicating a pullback is likely. Therefore, the altcoin could pull back to retest the support at $0.30 before resuming its upward rally.
The next major resistance is at $1, a level that IOTA has failed to break in two consecutive attempts in 2022. A break above this resistance could push the altcoin to retest $1.49, the December 2021 high.
