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 consecutive days to reach a 38-month high of $0.399 on Jan. 17, with its market cap briefly surpassing Stellar Lumens (XLM) before settling at $14.5 billion at press time.
HBAR’s recent gains were accompanied by a surge in activity and demand among traders, as reflected in the doubling of its trading volume to over $2.65 billion in the last 24 hours and a 25% rise in open interest in the futures market, reaching $562.46 million during the same period.
Several catalysts helped fuel HBAR’s rally and could potentially extend the gains in the coming weeks.
First, the project has been expanding its presence in the RWA tokenization sector, as highlighted by its recent partnership with gemstone certification giant World Gemological Institute and luxury Web3 fintech Vaultik to tokenize around $3 billion worth of diamonds and other luxury items on the Hedera blockchain network.
HBAR also benefitted from speculation around 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 stronger chance of being approved in 2025, ahead of others such as Ripple, Solana, and Litecoin.
Meanwhile, Hedera’s distributed ledger technology was recently deployed in the digital identity platform WISeKey’s next-generation satellites, which were launched aboard a SpaceX rocket, which added to the bullish investor sentiment.
Hedera’s growing prominence as a cheaper alternative to Ethereum and recent developments have also drawn the attention of whales. Data from HederaWatch reveals an uptick in accounts holding between 100k and 10 million HBAR.
Analysis
In terms of bullish technicals, on the 1-day HBAR/USDT price chart, the MACD line (blue) had crossed over the signal line (orange), with both pointing upwards. This is a sign that the trend strength remains strong.
HBAR’s price was also positioned above the Supertrend line, confirming the bulls were in control.
Meanwhile, its 50-day Exponential Moving Average has remained above the 200-day EMA, which means there is potential for more gains. Further, a look at its RSI shows the altcoin is yet to hit overbought levels.
Analysts at crypto.news have 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 rally to $0.45, a level it has not breached since November 2021, a breakout of this level could see it rallying towards the psychological resistance level at $0.50.
Beyond the aforementioned reasons, the HBAR rally could also gain additional support from a strong Bitcoin rally ahead of Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
At press time, HBAR was still up 11.9%, trading at $0.3724 per coin.
