Monacoin traded lower on Monday after ending last week on a 50-percent gain.
The MONA-to-dollar exchange rate fell as much as 30-percent to $0.94 from its Sunday peak. As of 1344 UTC, the pair had recovered towards $1.10 with the coin’s market capitalization at $72.3 million. However, based on a 24-hour adjusted timeframe, both the price and valuation was still down by circa 10-percent against the dollar and 10.5-percent against bitcoin.
Monacoin undergoes a dump after raising over 50% the previous week.| SOURCE: COINMARKETCAP.COM
The past 24 hours saw exchanges trading around $15.75 million worth of MONA-enabled pairs. Japan-based Bitbank hosted more than 90-percent of the total MONA trading volume against the Japanese Yen. At the same time, the exchange noted $367K worth of bitcoin-enabled trades in the MONA market. Bitbank is a regulated trading platform, which means that the probability of price manipulation by the exchange was the least in its case.
Mysterious Buyer
Monacoin is neither a Tezos featured in a high-profile staking service nor a Tron backed by a persistent marketer. The blockchain asset is merely a digital token which took its cues from a more established project like Litecoin and launched itself as a Japanese-version of Dogecoin in 2013. The project has been there for far too long which should keep the “scam accusations ” away. But that still does not explain the fundamentals around the mysterious MONA pump.
Twitterati Bobcat Crypto reported a “medium strength buy signal” on Bittrex, a US-based cryptocurrency exchange that raised the buy volume by circa 276-percent. It appears the mysterious buyer(s) exhausted its buying frenzy at a certain level, followed by an exit. That is the only explanation which could explain Monacoin’s intraday performance on Saturday throughout Sunday, followed by a sharp correction Monday.
Opportunities
Entering new long positions in the MONA market looks risky since the potential of an extended downside correction is high. Meanwhile, a Short target towards the intraday support level at $0.94 could yield a decent interim profit. A stop loss order maintained a few points above the entry position would minimize losses in the event of the asset rebounding ahead of testing the Short target.
