Remember that euphoric feeling when everyone was calling for new all-time highs just a few months ago? Yeah, me too. Now look at HBAR – stuck in the mud at $0.1350, down more than 55% from its August peak, and the chart is screaming caution from every corner.
Honestly, it hurts a little to watch. Hedera always felt like the “grown-up” network in a sea of meme coins – enterprise partnerships, real governance council members, hashgraph instead of blockchain. But the price action right now? It’s painting one of the ugliest pictures I’ve seen in a while.
A Textbook Bearish Setup Nobody Wants to Talk About
Let’s not sugarcoat this. The daily chart has formed a head and shoulders pattern so clean it could be in a trading textbook. Left shoulder around $0.2260, head at $0.3043 in August, ironically, the week the ETF rumors were strongest, and now the right shoulder struggling to stay above $0.14.
The neckline sits at approximately $0.1266 – a level that has acted as support multiple times this year. We’re literally hovering just above it as I write this. Break that, and the measured move takes us all the way down to about $0.052. That’s not a typo. We’re talking roughly 62% downside from current levels.
When a head-and-shoulders forms after a 400% rally and coincides with slowing fundamental momentum, history shows the breakdown probability is painfully high.
The Death Cross That Actually Matters
Adding insult to injury, the 50-day EMA crossed below the 200-day EMA back in October – the infamous death cross. I usually roll my eyes at these because they’re lagging indicators, but when they happen inside a head-and-shoulders? That’s when I start paying attention.
Even the Supertrend indicator flipped bearish weeks ago, and the Relative Strength Index has been making lower highs since summer. Everything is pointing the same direction: down.
ETF Inflows: From Firehose to Trickle
Remember the excitement when the spot Hedera ETFs launched? $70 million poured in during the first two weeks alone. Traders were front-running institutional money, convinced this was the catalyst that would finally push HBAR past $0.50.
Fast forward to last week: the biggest ETF saw exactly $0 in new money on Thursday and Friday. Weekly inflows dropped to a pathetic $1.78 million. Total assets under management? Still under $62 million – barely 1% of market cap.
Compare that to what’s happening elsewhere. Investors are rotating hard into Solana ecosystem tokens, XRP (thanks to the ongoing regulatory clarity), and Chainlink as real-world asset narrative heats up. Hedera? Crickets.
The Ecosystem Isn’t Helping Either
Here’s where it gets really concerning. While the price was making lower highs, I expected the on-chain metrics to at least show some resilience. They don’t.
- Total Value Locked in Hedera DeFi: down 20% in the last 30 days to $142 million
- Stablecoin supply: crashed from $170+ million in November to $83 million now
- New dApp launches in DeFi sector: basically zero in recent months
- Daily active addresses: trending lower since summer
It’s hard to rally when nobody’s actually using the network for anything meaningful. Enterprise adoption stories are great for press releases, but retail traders care about TVL, volume, and actual utility tokens doing things.
What Would Change My Mind?
Look, I’m not married to being bearish. If we see certain things happen, I’ll happily flip:
- A decisive close back above $0.18 with strong volume (invalidates the H&S)
- ETF inflows returning to $10M+ daily levels consistently
- Major new DeFi protocol launch with real TVL migration
- Stablecoin supply starting to climb again
Until then? The risk/reward heavily favors the downside.
Where Support Might Actually Hold (If We’re Lucky)
If the neckline breaks – and current momentum suggests it will – there are a few zones where buyers might step in:
- $0.10 psychological level + previous resistance-turned-support
- $0.08 where we had the massive volume in early 2024
- $0.052 the H&S measured move (often overshoots slightly)
I’ve seen these patterns play out dozens of times. Sometimes they fake out and reverse. More often in bear markets, they deliver the full measured move and then some.
The bottom line? HBAR is at a dangerous inflection point. The technical setup is textbook bearish, the ETF narrative has lost all momentum, and the ecosystem metrics are deteriorating rather than improving.
Could it bounce here? Sure, anything’s possible in crypto. But right now, the evidence is overwhelmingly pointing toward significantly lower prices before we see any meaningful bottom.
I’ve been trading altcoins long enough to know that when the chart, the flows, and the fundamentals all align in one direction, you don’t fight it. You respect it.
Stay safe out there.
