HBAR soared 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 reach 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 press time.
HBAR’s recent gains have been accompanied by a surge in activity and demand among traders, as evidenced by the doubling of its trading volume to over $2.65 billion in the past 24 hours and a 25% increase in open interest in the futures market, reaching $562.46 million in the last 24 hours. the same period.
Several catalysts have helped fuel HBAR’s rally and could potentially extend gains in the coming weeks.
Firstly, the project has expanded its presence in the RWA tokenization sector, as highlighted by its recent partnership with gem certification giant World Gemological Institute and luxury fintech Web3 Vaultik to tokenize approximately $3 billion worth of diamonds and other luxury items on the Hedera blockchain network.
HBAR also benefited from speculation around the approval of an HBAR cash exchange-traded fund by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission under the new Trump administration.
Notably, Canary, a fund manager, has already filed for an ETF focused on HBAR, and some analysts believe it has a greater chance of being approved in 2025, ahead of others like Ripple, Solana and Litecoin.
Meanwhile, Hedera’s distributed ledger technology has recently been deployed in the next generation satellites of the digital identity platform WISeKey, which were launched aboard a SpaceX rocket, which reinforced bullish investor sentiment.
Hedera’s growing prominence as a cheaper alternative to Ethereum and recent developments have also attracted the attention of whales. HederaWatch data reveals a slight increase in accounts holding between 100,000 and 10 million HBARs.
Analysis
In terms of bullish technical data, on the HBAR/USDT 1-day price chart, the MACD line (blue) has crossed the signal line (orange), with both pointing upwards. This is a sign that the strength of the trend remains strong.
HBAR price was also positioned above the Supertrend line, confirming that the bulls were in control.
Meanwhile, its 50-day exponential moving average has remained above the 200-day EMA, meaning there is potential for further gains. Additionally, a look at its RSI shows that the altcoin has not yet reached overbought levels.
crypto.news analysts have already 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 rally back to $0.45, a level it has not breached since November 2021, a breakout of this level could see it move back towards the psychological resistance level at $0.50.
Beyond the reasons mentioned above, the HBAR rally could also benefit from additional support from a strong Bitcoin rally ahead of Trump’s inauguration on January 20.
At press time, HBAR was still up 11.9%, trading at $0.3724 per coin.