Celer (CELR), Cartesi (CTSI) and Compound (COMP) rally as DeFi heats up

Aiming to reduce the cost of transacting within DeFi is attracting developers and investors to Celer Network, Cartesi and Compound.

Bitcoin bulls are still struggling to push the price to a new high but the positive sign is that BTC has not corrected sharply in the past few days and the top-ranked cryptocurrency has held a market capitalization above $1 trillion since March 26. 

While many are wondering what Bitcoin’s next move will be, a Bloomberg Intelligence report by senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone projects that BTC will rally to $80,000 in the second quarter rather than slump to the $40,000 level.

Crypto market data daily view. Source: Coin360

Bitcoin’s consolidation has not held back altcoins, which have continued their march higher over the past few weeks. Cointelegraph recently reported that the number of cryptocurrencies commanding a $1 billion market capitalization has doubled in the past two months to hit the 100 mark.

Decentralized finance assets have also rallied significantly as the total value locked in DeFi reached $100 billion on April 6 according to data from DeFi Llama. At the start of the year, the TVL metric was only $20.74 billion, which shows there has been a massive amount of growth in the space.

Keeping the focus on altcoins, let’s analyze the fundamentals of three tokens that have done well in the past few days.

CELR/USDT

Celer Network’s CELR token was featured on Cointelegraph on March 16 when the price was at $0.059. Since then the token has continued its uptrend and hit a new all-time high at $0.103 on March 28, a further 74% rally in a short time.

The DeFi space has been in focus in the past few months for its mouth-watering yields. However, surging Ethereum network fees have limited these benefits to larger players and retail-sized investors with less capital have missed out on many great investing opportunities.

To address this problem, Celer announced the launch of Layer2.finance on Feb. 18, which claims to tremendously cut the cost of accessing DeFi. According to the team, the project is in its final stages of an audit and is expected to launch soon. If this succeeds, Celer could address one of the main problems that may is limiting the rise of DeFi.

CELR has been in a correction since topping out at $0.103 on March 28. The pullback has reached the 20-day exponential moving average ($0.071) but the bulls are struggling to defend this level.

CELR/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

This suggests that the bullish sentiment has weakened and traders are not rushing to buy the dips. The flattening 20-day EMA and the relative strength index (RSI) below 54 points to a possible range-bound action in the short term.

If the buyers defend the $0.065 support, the CELR/USDT pair could attempt to resume the up-move but it is likely to meet stiff resistance at $0.087 and then $0.095. However, if the bulls propel the price above $0.103, the pair could rally to $0.122 and then $0.155.

On the downside, if the bears sink the price below $0.065, the decline could extend to the next support at the 50-day simple moving average ($0.047). Such a deep correction usually delays the start of the next leg of the uptrend.

CTSI/USDT

Cartesi (CTSI) aims to take the traditional tools used by the developer community and merge them with decentralized tools. This could attract several developers to decentralization who are currently held back due to the different programming languages being used for blockchain. Additionally, the team believes that their technology could increase the computational power of certain applications by 10,000%.

In the past couple of months, Cartesi has announced partnerships with Injective, Travala, IOTA, Polygon, Elrond, and Avalanche. Over the next few weeks and months, the crypto community will keenly watch Cartesi’s layer-2 technology to see if it can enhance computational throughput and implement processing-intensive applications without compromising security.

CTSI has been in an uptrend for the past few weeks. It rallied from an intraday low at $0.077 on Feb. 8 to an intraday high at $0.896 on April 4, a 1,063% rally within two months.

CTSI/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

However, after the sharp rally of the past few days, the CTSI/USDT pair is currently witnessing profit-booking. The bears have pulled the price below the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level at $0.583 and the next support is the 50% retracement level at $0.486.

If the pair rebounds off the $0.486 level, it will be a bullish sign as it will show that the previous resistance of $0.466 has flipped to support. The bulls will then try to resume the uptrend but are likely to be met with heavy selling near $0.65.

If the price turns down from this resistance, the pair could remain range-bound for a few days. A breakout and close above $0.65 will be the first indication that the bulls are attempting a comeback. On the other hand, a break below $0.466 could signal a possible change in trend.

COMP/USDT

Compound (COMP) continues to grow stronger despite setbacks in the DeFi sector. On Feb. 21, the protocol reported a total supply of $10 billion, which has since then surged to over $15 billion on April 3. The protocol continues to lead the DeFi rankings with a total value locked at $9.53 billion.

On March 1, Compound announced the launch of Gateway, a Substrate blockchain, which the team believes will eventually evolve into the backbone of a global interest rate market that is capable of supporting any asset.

on March 26 Compound Labs founder and CEO Robert Leshner tweeted that he had given a DeFi presentation to Federal Reserve staff. This is a major first step as it shows that the leading central bank in the world is interested to know m about DeFi.

On April 3, Compound received 629,000 Ether ($1.3 billion) from an anonymous whale and many suspect that this is proof that major institutions are jumping into DeFi.

COMP rallied from an intraday low at $330 on March 25 to an intraday high at $562.85 on April 4, a 70% rally within a short time. The bears are aggressively defending the overhead resistance zone between $558 and $573.

COMP/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

The COMP/USDT pair is stuck inside a large range between $320 and $558. The current pullback could find support at the 20-day EMA ($444), which has started to turn up. If the pair rebounds off this level, the bulls will once again try to push the price above the overhead zone.

If the bulls succeed, the pair could start the next leg of the uptrend which has a target objective at $796.

Contrary to this assumption, if the price slips below the moving averages, it could extend the decline and reach the support at $320. A break below this critical support could intensify selling and pull the price down to $200.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.