The next hard fork of Ethereum (ETH), “Istanbul,” is scheduled to go live this weekend, and the response from the market so far has been zilch. ETH has continued to meander mostly sideways on its Bitcoin pairing, after having dropped sharply with Bitcoin on its USD pairing.

We can begin with the daily ETH/Bitcoin pairing, where we see that Ethereum is on its way to retesting a support band for the third time since September. This would be a risky event, as supports often break after repeated testing. What’s more, we see that ETH recently lost a chance to continue consolidating up, toward the 2017 “capitulation level” – where price entered territory not seen since 2017.

Risking another test of supportETH chart by TradingView

The histogram looks here like it could begin expanding to the downside again, although it is too soon to say.

Moving to a 3-day ETH/USD chart, we see that Ethereum is now well within the market structure of the 2018 bear market bottom, from a year ago. There are not many supports left to cling to in this structure, which briefly went into double digits last year. Volume at the moment is generally low, after expending itself mid-year during the periods of gain.

Not many levels left to testETH chart by TradingView

On the EHT/USD daily chart, we actually see a promising movement on the histogram, with the beginnings of a gently expanding (bearish) profile seeming to reverse yesterday up and through to the positive side.

Histogram reversal? We'll seeETH chart by TradingView

We would have to see this translate into a daily close or two above the 8 EMA, for starters. Volume is dead at the moment on Coinbase, while the RSI is neutrally pegged to price.

All in all, we are still waiting for a bottom on the king of altcoins. The low volume suggests the end of a consolidating period may come soon. The bullish and bearish signs are pretty much equal, making it a wildcard scenario heading into the weekend hard fork. After a 63% correction from the 2019 top, though, one wonders how much further ETH can go.

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