Could this be Ethereum’s “laser eyes” moment? Or is it Ethiopia’s? Twitter has added the African nation’s flag as an automatic symbol to its #eth hashtag, and ETH fans are loving it, throwing their support behind the country at the Tokyo Olympics.

An Ethereum-based DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) called EthiopiaDAO has even quickly formed, with community members proposing possible sponsorship of the Ethiopian Olympic team.

After Jack Dorsey simply tweeted the hashtag, which many assumed was a quality troll from the Bitcoin-loving Twitter CEO, the official Olympics Twitter account gave its response…

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During the course of the Tokyo Olympics so far, Twitter has been attaching flags to the hashtags of all competing nations as part of its “hashflags” promotion.

Although Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin hasn’t officially commented on the hashflag hoo-ha just yet, the Bitcoin Maxi meme crowd was having some fun with it all, posting this fake tweet…

Some other reactions…

At the time of writing, Ethereum was looking in decent shape at US$2,020, up roughly 1% in the past 24 hours. Could it surge this weekend if ETHiopian athletes nail it in an event or two? Stranger things in crypto have certainly happened.

That said, long-distance races (not on the finals schedule this weekend) are more the African nation’s bag. And maybe that holds true for Ethereum for now, too.

With the protocol’s hugely anticipated EIP-1559 upgrade just around the corner, though, some fans are probably thinking the ETH tracksuit is due to come off any moment.

Bitcoin’s weekend forecast

Meanwhile, it’s been a strong few days for Bitcoin and crypto in general, partly thanks to a certain midweek fireside chat/pep talk at The B Word summit. And perhaps the fact US investment bank JP Morgan has just announced it plans to grant crypto trading access to all its clients has had something to do with it, too.

But crypto weekends are about as predictable as the Twitter account of “Dogefather” and Tesla “Technoking” Elon Musk.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is currently sitting, if not pretty, then pretty okay at US$32,120.

According to Dutch trader Michaël van de Poppe, the 30.5K–31K level must flip as the lowest immediate level of support lest things become particularly bearish once more. In which case, he’s looking at three lower targets of US$26K, $24K and $20K.

The technical analyst is expecting a US$31K retest at some stage this weekend, but if Bitcoin can break $32.8K, then… strap in. For a possible short moon mission to the US$36–$37K zone, that is.

 

Keen chart watchers, such as Van de Poppe and Rekt Capital, will also be waiting for the midnight hour come Sunday. Bitcoin had one of its worst weekly candle closes in 2021 last weekend, dipping below the US$30K mark not too long after. Rekt Capital was showing some optimism for Bitcoin, however, heading into Saturday…

 

A regular on Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano’s YouTube podcast is William Clemente. He might only be 19 years old, but Clemente is developing a following for his astute reads of on-chain Bitcoin data, not unlike Kiwi analyst Willy Woo.

Pompliano is the co-founder and partner of Morgan Creek, a US hedge fund specialising in Bitcoin and blockchain technology.

In his weekly on-chain overview sent out today, Clemente gave his key thoughts heading into the weekend, cautioning that “we’re not out of the woods” just yet, but indicating that the stronger-handed participants in the Bitcoin market are accumulating and not selling.

One particular chart that caught our interest relates to Bitcoin miner activity. The Glassnode chart indicates Bitcoin miners are accumulating, and have been to the level that it’s now a confirmed trend.

“This is looking at the 30-day change between miner balance,” wrote Clemente in his overview. “Looking at the raw balance can be useful, but when you start to see a move in net position change you can confirm that trend in the data. This is once again showing a trend of miner accumulation.”

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Mooners and shakers

Two words… Axie Infinity. The play-to-earn gaming project has been on an all-new moon mission of its own in the past 24 hours, and past few days, after recovering from its dip earlier in the week.

Easily leading the top 100 (by market cap) gainers of the day, AXS is changing hands for US$30.39 at the time of writing. It hit an all time high of US$32.19 a short time ago, so it’s still bumping around, like most things at the moment, but it’s up 22.4% in the past 24 hours and 37.6% on the week.

Play-to-earn gaming is a hugely innovative and exciting sector of crypto and one we’re certainly aiming to cover further.

Onto DeFi… Another project doing well today is UniLend Finance (UFT), which is a decentralised lending platform on Polygon (MATIC).

It’s working in the same areas as top-30 crypto Aave (AAVE), but is ranked all the way down at position 486 on CoinGecko, with a market cap of about US$33.6 million. At press time, it was up 33% in the past 24 hours but still down a whopping 86% from its all-time high.

Unsurprisingly, after copping another hammer blow in the past 24 hours, the day’s biggest top-100 loser was THORChain (RUNE), down 22.5% on the day and feeling sorry for itself again at US$3.63.