Price analysis 4/18: BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP, SOL, ADA, LUNA, AVAX, DOGE, DOT

cointelegraph.com:

Bitcoin (BTC) and most major altcoins have started the new week on a soft note and the Crypto Fear and Greed Index has dropped into the “extreme fear” zone, suggesting that investors are still nervous.

Bitcoin has declined about 17% year-to-date while the Nasdaq 100 has dropped about 16% during the same period, indicating a tight correlation between the two. In comparison, gold has risen more than 10% in 2022 and its 50-day correlation coefficient with Bitcoin “is around minus 0.4, the lowest since 2018," according to journalist Colin Wu.

Although the crypto price action has remained bearish, the declining balance of Bitcoin on the crypto exchanges indicates that long-term investors are unperturbed and continue to accumulate at every available opportunity. Data from on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant suggests that the Bitcoin balance of 21 major exchanges dropped to its lowest level since July 2018 at 2.274 million Bitcoin as of April 17.

Could buying emerge at lower levels or will bears build upon their advantage and sink prices lower? Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

Bitcoin has been trading inside an ascending channel pattern for the past several days. The bulls defended the psychological level at $40,000 for the past few days but could not achieve a strong rebound off it. This suggests that demand dries up at higher levels.

The bears pulled the price below the immediate support at $39,200 today but the long tail on the candlestick indicates bulls are buying at lower levels.

If the price rises back above $40,000, the bulls will make one more attempt to clear the 50-day simple moving average ($42,167). If they succeed, the pair could rise to $43,900 and later attempt a rally to the 200-day