Bitcoin price is struggling to clear the $17,000 resistance zone. BTC must stay above $16,000 to avoid more losses in the near term.

• Bitcoin is still consolidating above the $16,350 and $16,000 support levels.
• The price is trading just above $16,500 and the 100 hourly simple moving average.
• There is a major bearish trend line forming with resistance near $16,750 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair (data feed from Kraken).
• The pair could start a recovery wave if it clears the $17,000 resistance zone.

Bitcoin Price Faces Resistance

Bitcoin price made an attempt to gain strength above the $17,000 resistance zone. However, BTC struggled to remain stable above the $17,000 level.

The price traded as high as $17,098 and recently started a slow decline. There was a move below the $16,800 and $16,650 levels. The price declined below the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the upward move from the $15,833 swing low to $17,098 high.

The price even spiked below the $16,500 level. However, the bulls were active near the 50% Fib retracement level of the upward move from the $15,833 swing low to $17,098 high.

Bitcoin price is now trading just above $16,500 and the 100 hourly simple moving average. On the upside, an immediate resistance is near the $16,750 level. There is also a major bearish trend line forming with resistance near $16,750 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair.

The first major resistance is near the $17,000 zone. A clear move above the $17,000 resistance could set the pace for a decent recovery wave.

Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

The next major resistance is near $17,500, above which the price could rise towards the $18,000 zone. Any more gains might send the price towards the $18,500 resistance zone.

Fresh Decline in BTC?

If bitcoin fails to gain pace above the $17,000 resistance zone, it could continue to move down. An immediate support on the downside is near the $16,600 level and the 100 hourly SMA.

The next major support is near the $16,350 zone. The main support is near the $16,000 zone. A clear move below the $16,000 support might spark another major decline in the near term.

Technical indicators:

Hourly MACD – The MACD is now gaining pace in the bullish zone.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for BTC/USD is now above the 50 level.

Major Support Levels – $16,350, followed by $16,000.

Major Resistance Levels – $16,750, $17,000 and $17,500.

Adaverse and EMURGO held an exclusive hangout with founders and stakeholders in the blockchain space on Thursday, May 5, 2022, in Lagos, Nigeria.

EMURGO is the official commercial arm governing investment operations of the Cardano blockchain, which is regarded as one of the top platforms for building tech solutions in the blockchain space.

The event created an atmosphere for networking and sharing ideas between the organisers and the attendees.

Shogo Ishida and Yosuke Yoshida (co-CEOs of EMURGO Africa and the Middle East) were the representatives of EMURGO present at the hangout.

In his opening remarks, Chimezie Chuta, Founder and coordinator of Blockchain Nigeria Users group and Partner at Adaverse, discussed some of the advantages of building on the blockchain.

“Blockchain technology is one of the most lucrative opportunities available for entrepreneurs and people in tech to build solutions and be rewarded for doing so both from the market and the industry itself.”

He also highlighted how lack of regulation could be both good and bad in the blockchain space. Discussing the good, he said that the absence of regulation in the blockchain space gives people the opportunities to experiment. Also, you don’t need to be in a specific place to build and launch your product.

Chimezie added that there are tons of African-specific problems requiring blockchain-specific solutions. Also, the lack of legacy systems is an advantage for blockchain startups, giving them opportunities to build new solutions.

Chimezie then reiterated the importance of branding to new founders in the blockchain space. He advised founders to look at brand strategy and messaging as a relationship. He added that businesses should look at their brand strategy as a relationship between them and their customers.

Chimezie discussed how Adaverse plans to help blockchain-focused startups. He said Adaverse could help in terms of tokenisation design, articulate how the token economy of the project should look like, technical consultation, skills and talents acquisition, marketing, financial support, and mentorship.

In the past three months, Adaverse has made some investments, and they are looking forward to kickstarting their accelerator program soon.

Startups can get up to $500,000 if Adaverse finds what they are building to be interesting enough. Also, if the project valuation ranges from 2 to 30 million dollars, it increases the chances of being accepted into the program. Adaverse has already invested in about seven startups, which include Canza, Cassava, and Afriguild, among others. ,

Adaverse investment interests cut across solutions building on the emerging Web3. Some of the portfolio companies already funded are focused on cross border payments, Web3, DeFi, talent protocol, NFTs, gaming and p2p systems. 

The next speaker, Yosuke Yoshida, Ex-CEO of EMURGO Japan and co-CEO for the Middle East, highlighted that Cardano is a third-generation blockchain built to improve previous generations, which are Bitcoin and Ethereum, respectively.

Cardano is unique because they look to solve the scalability problem present in the blockchain space. The settlement layer and the combination layer are the layers present in the Cardano blockchain.

Secondly, interoperability is another important solution that Cardano aims to provide in the blockchain space. They look at connecting with legacy companies such as banks.

Finally, sustainability. The Cardano blockchain is in the third stage of development out of five, and they plan to open the development and contribution to the community after the fifth stage is complete.

Yosuke said that more improvement is being made on the blockchain, and they constantly go through peer review, which means that they spend a lot of time in research. They collaborate with people in academia and implement after considerable research has been done.

He then mentioned that they have been collaborating with different projects in the blockchain, and Adaverse, who organised and hosted the hangout, was one of them.

The goal of the collaborations is to increase the Cardano blockchain usage and encourage founders to build solutions that will be hosted on the blockchain.

EMURGO has many arms, which are not limited to EMURGO ventures, EMURGO Africa, including standard technology tools available on the platform, such as the Yoroi wallet, which is the main wallet of the Cardano blockchain. EMURGO, in partnership with Adaverse, has a venture capital wheel where they plan to invest in blockchain centred startups.

EMURGO has invested in a host of startups that offer web3-based solutions, one of which is API3, and they plan to do more.

Shogo Ishida, Executive Director, EMURGO for the Middle East and Africa, talked about investments, requirements and what they expect founders to have when applying for funding.

He highlighted some points, which include having a team. Founders should try not to build alone.

‘A team is very important. However, If you have a team, are they good enough?”

Shogo further said that they are responsible for all the EMURGO syndicates, and they have built a 100 million dollar investment wheel.

Therefore, they want to know what the founders have been building, and they want to know how they can help. 

Speaking on why there is a focus on Africa, Shogo said there is an identification (ID) issue, especially in developing countries. The lack of ID cuts people off many benefits, which is why they partnered with the Ethiopian government and built schools. They look at creating and providing digital IDs and increasing access to financial services.

In their bid to enter the African space, they have invested and partnered with Adaverse and Adanian labs.

In his closing remarks, Shogo said founders have to be passionate about their projects. Giving a hint on what they expect from founders, Shogo said that giving a general overview of the project or demography is not enough. Founders should do in-depth research and make them understand what and who the target market is.

In summary, they at EMURGO will look at the team, research, product and the traction or engagement it gets. Founders and developers are encouraged to build their solutions on the Cardano blockchain.

Founders in need of funding are encouraged to send their pitch deck to apply at  https://www.adaverse.co/ and may send a follow-up mail to chuta@adaverse.co.

Event Coverage by Techpoint Africa

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Outcomes should be “front-and-centre” of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosure’s (TNFD) approach to metrics and target-setting as the framework evolves, according to feedback from Cardano and its Dutch sustainable investment subsidiary Actiam.

In early March TNFD released the first beta version of a nature-related risk management and disclosure framework for consultation. It said early feedback within 45 days was especially welcome from corporates, financial institutions and regulators.

Together, Actiam and Cardano responded to the TNFD’s online questionnaire about the ‘v0.1 beta release’ and followed up on this with a letter to the Taskforce summarising their feedback.

One of the points they made was that in their reading, the TNFD focusses more on companies’ “dependencies” on biodiversity and ecosystem services provided by nature than on companies’ impact on biodiversity and the drivers of biodiversity loss.

“While we see benefits in focussing on dependencies (for example, the opportunities of nature-based solutions), we would encourage alignment with existing initiatives, and therefore, further attention to impact,” wrote Arjan Ruijs, senior responsible investment officer at Actiam, and Will Martindale, group head of sustainability at Cardano.

Speaking to IPE, Martindale said the TNFD’s alignment with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) framework was welcome and that “the one area we’d like to encourage TNFD to really prioritise is this idea of outcomes”.

“So while TCFD is predominantely focussed on financial risks associated with climate change, TNFD is looking to reflect this concept of double materiality,” he added.

Also welcoming the alignment with the TCFD, Ruijs said one of his main recommendations was that the TNFD should look carefully at the initiatives that are ongoing, for example in relation to biodiversity accounting and measurement, such as the Partnership for Biodiversity Accounting Financials.

“When reading the TNFD report I get a little bit the impression that it’s more a top-down approach,” he said. “I think it would be good to combine these things.”

Terminology 

A concern of Ruijs’ is the language of the TNFD’s proposed framework, which, though making reference to biodiversity, focusses on nature.

“But if you look at most initiatives they have biodiversity as the starting point,” Ruijs said. “For financial institutions biodiversity is easier to consider than nature.”

In their letter, Martindale and Ruijs said that while they were not suggesting a rename, “we note that ‘nature’ is a less well-defined concept within financial matures and as such may make it harder for companies to set targets”.

“By giving more emphasis to biodiversity and the drivers of biodiversity loss, we think the TNFD would provide companies (and their investors) additional clarity in target-setting.”

Terminology and definitions should be rooted in the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), they said. IPBES can be thought of as the biodiversity counterparty to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Martindale and Ruijs also gave specific feedback relating to measurement and target-setting tools, saying they suggested ENCORE and IPBES for biodiversity measurement, and recommended ‘Mean Species Abundance’ or ‘Potentially Disappeared Fraction’ as metrics for target-setting.

“In particular, for asset managers, we recommend a ‘foot-printing’ methodology that would allow us to measure our portfolio impact,” their letter stated. “That said, foot-printing should be used to prioritise stewardship and company behaviour-change.”

A further three iterations of the TNFD beta version are planned before release of the final version v1.0 of the framework in the third quarter of 2023.

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