Could IOTA price surge to $1 ahead of the Rebased upgrade?

IOTA price rose to $0.2153 on Monday, November 19, after developers announced the next upgrade for the distributed ledger network.

IOTA (IOTA) pulled back to $0.1760 on Tuesday, approaching a technical bear market. This decline brought its market value to $627 million, a significant decline from its record high of over $14 billion.

In a statement, the developers announced plans to launch Rebase, a new upgrade aimed at making the network more attractive to developers. If the proposal is approved, IOTA’s network will include features such as full decentralization, Ethereum Virtual Machine support, and the ability to process more than 50,000 transactions per second.

These are notable developments considering Ethereum (ETH) processes less than 50 transactions per second, while Solana processes around 2,500 TPS. The upgrade will also introduce staking, allowing users to earn returns by transferring their funds.

The rebasing represents a major shift for IOTA, representing a move from a mostly centralized system with limited programmability to a system with advanced functionality.

Despite the proposed improvements, IOTA faces intense competition in the layer-1 industry, which is dominated by Ethereum, Solana and BNB Smart Chain. It also struggles with layer-2 networks like Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon.

Additionally, IOTA needs to overcome the challenge of attracting developers. The IOTA Ethereum Virtual Machine has attracted only a small number of developers, with a total value locked at $32.3 million and only seven decentralized finance applications in its ecosystem.

IOTA price’s path to $1 challenges the OTA price chart | source: crypto.news

The daily chart shows that the IOTA token formed a falling wedge pattern before the recent recovery. This rally coincided with a broader cryptocurrency rally and positive sentiment reflected in the fear and greed index.

IOTA price broke above the wedge pattern and crossed the 50-day and 200-day Exponential Moving Averages. It also retested the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement level.

More gains could be confirmed if the token breaks above the key resistance at $0.2150, the November 18 swing high. Such a move could push the price towards the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level at $0.2988, approximately 70% above the current price.

However, hopes for IOTA to reach $1 are relatively slim as it would require a 466% increase from its current level.