Algorand price shot up over 20% on Wednesday, becoming the best performer among the leading 100 crypto assets by market cap.
According to data from crypto.news, Algorand ($ALGO) price hit an 8-week high of $0.105 on Wednesday while bringing its market cap to over $936 million. The move follows just two days after the token hit an all-time low.
The main catalyst that drove the Algorand price rebound today is its citation by Google Quantum AI in a recent paper focused on the threats major blockchains face from quantum computing. Notably, the project was mentioned over 32 times in the document, ranking just after Bitcoin and Ethereum for its proactive stance on post-quantum cryptography.
In contrast, some of the top crypto projects, such as Solana and XRP, were mentioned nearly half as often, while Hedera and Avalanche received zero mentions in the report.
Being cited in one of the most prestigious research papers gave Algorand a big boost in visibility and enhanced its technical appeal to investors who felt they got a massive discount from the token hitting its lowest level since inception.
A recent major development that has also supported its gains today includes Algorand’s integration into the Swiss retail bank PostFinance, which enabled its 2.5 million customers to directly trade and hold $ALGO using their existing accounts.
Demand from derivative traders has also buoyed the token price. Data from CoinGlass shows that the open interest dedicated to Algorand futures rose 55% over the past day to $58.9 million.
Meanwhile, its weighted funding rate has shifted to a positive reading, suggesting that long position holders were paying short traders to maintain their positions, which is widely seen as a bullish signal for the market.
Algorand price analysis
On the daily chart, Algorand price has broken out of a descending parallel channel pattern, a major bearish structure that had been capping gains since the beginning of this year.
Algorand price has crossed over the 20-day, 50-day, and 100-day SMA back-to-back over the past two days, a sign that short-term momentum is turning aggressively bullish. Furthermore, the supertrend indicators, which traders use to gauge market direction, remain in the green, suggesting the path of least resistance is currently to the upside.
For now, $0.138, which marks the 200-day SMA, is the most important resistance level that traders would be keeping a close watch on. A break above that could signal a long-term trend reversal and open the door for a much larger recovery toward previous yearly highs.
However, if Algorand price falls below the 50-day SMA at $0.088, it would invalidate the current breakout and likely lead to a retest of the recent all-time lows.
