The cryptocurrency market has seen some gains over the past 24 hours with Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and many other leading digital assets.
In turn, NEAR Protocol (NEAR) outperformed every competitor in the top 100 clubs and recorded an impressive pump of 12%.
What sparked the rally and what’s next?
NEAR has been at the forefront of gains lately, reaching a monthly high of around $1.45 just a few hours ago. Currently, it is trading around $1.35 (according to CoinGecko), which represents a jump of around 40% on a weekly basis. Its market capitalization has exceeded $1.7 billion, making it the 44th largest cryptocurrency and replacing popular altcoins such as Bittensor (TAO), Pi Network (PI) and others.
The main catalyst for the rally seems to be a technical update announced by the NEAR Protocol group. The official X project account revealed that Confidential Intents is live, a feature that allows users to perform private DeFi transactions without exposing sensitive details.
“DeFi users, developers, and institutions are now unwittingly opening up a wide range of privacy use cases,” the disclosure said.
X user Emperor Osmo stated that NEAR is “grossly underappreciated”, adding that Intents is generating widespread adoption.
“Meanwhile, they are increasing the pace of adoption where AI is enabling the first business in privacy (Iron Claw). Agency payments are at scale, and Near is positioned to capture the bulk of this flow,” they said.
Michael van de Poppe also spoke highly of NEAR, describing it as “the best AI protocol in the ecosystem.” He wondered why investors wouldn’t want to add it to their portfolios, adding that from a technical perspective, “it’s the best representation of the current state of altcoins.”
Altcoin Sherpa believes that NEAR is “crazy strong”, while Sjuul | AltCryptoGems thinks that the asset is trying to print a “bowl and handle” formation on the price chart. This pattern consists of a rounded bottom (bowl) and a small return on the right side (handle), and they usually together represent a delicious installation.
Not so fast
Despite the apparent recovery, NEAR remains well below its all-time high of around $20 at the start of 2022. Meanwhile, some technical indicators suggest that a correction is on the way.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI), which measures the speed and magnitude of recent price movements, briefly crossed 70. This means that NEAR has entered overbought territory and could be on the verge of moving south. Conversely, odds of less than 30 are considered buying opportunities.
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