HBAR rose 20%, driven by a new partnership in the RWA tokenization market and rumors of an upcoming HBAR ETF.
Hedera (HBAR) rallied for four straight days to hit a 38-month high of $0.399 on January 17, with its market cap briefly surpassing Stellar Lumens (XLM) before settling at $14.5 billion at the time of writing.
HBAR’s recent gains have been accompanied by a surge in activity and demand among traders, as reflected in the doubling of trading volume to over $2.65 billion in the last 24 hours and a 25% increase in open interest on the futures market, up to $562.46 million over the past 24 hours. the same period.
Several catalysts contributed to HBAR’s rally and could potentially extend gains in the coming weeks.
First, the project has expanded its presence in the RWA tokenization sector, as highlighted by the recent one partnership with gemstone certification giant World Gemological Institute and luxury Web3 fintech Vaultik to tokenize approximately $3 billion worth of diamonds and other luxury items on the Hedera blockchain network.
HBAR also benefited from speculation surrounding the approval of a spot HBAR exchange-traded fund by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission under the incoming Trump administration.
Notably, Canary, a fund manager, has already filed for an HBAR-focused ETF, and some analysts believe it has a better chance of being approved in 2025, ahead of others like Ripple, Solana and Litecoin.
Meanwhile, Hedera’s distributed ledger technology was recent deployed in digital identity platform WISeKey’s next-generation satellites, which were launched aboard a SpaceX rocket, adding to bullish investor sentiment.
Hedera’s growing prominence as a cheaper alternative to Ethereum and recent developments have also caught the attention of whales. Data from HederaWatch shows an increase in the number of accounts with between 100,000 and 10 million HBAR.
Analysis
In terms of bullish technical data, the MACD line (blue) on the 1-day HBAR/USDT price chart had crossed the signal line (orange), with both pointing to the upside. This is a sign that trend strength remains strong.
HBAR’s price was also above the Supertrend line, confirming that the bulls were in control.
Meanwhile, the 50-day exponential moving average has remained above the 200-day EMA, meaning there is potential for more gains. Furthermore, a look at the RSI shows that the altcoin has not yet reached the overbought level.
Analysts at crypto.news previously reported that the HBAR daily chart had formed a bull flag pattern, a strong bullish signal in technical analysis.
Based on these indicators, the altcoin is likely to rise to $0.45, a level it has not exceeded since November 2021. If it breaks through this level, it could rise towards the psychological resistance level of $0.50.
In addition to the above reasons, the HBAR rally could also receive additional support from a strong Bitcoin rally ahead of Trump’s inauguration on January 20.
At the time of writing, HBAR was still up 11.9% and trading at $0.3724 per coin.
