LDO may give the bulls an edge; is Lido’s lead on this front the reason?

• Lido beats out the staking competition by a mile even in slow market conditions.
• LDO bulls struggle to regain dominance even as bears ease off their assault.

The cryptocurrency market has notably slowed down in Q3 so far. Staking platforms like Lido [LDO] tend to experience TVL changes in such outcomes. Regardless, recent findings revealed that Lido was still the favorite staking platform for most.

Realistic or not, here’s LDO’s market cap in BTC’s terms

According to a recent IntoTheBlock analysis, Lido Finance was still the leading staking platform. The latest readings also revealed that it controlled 28.26% of the total staking market share. Not only that, but Lido has an impressive lead especially compared to some of its rivals.

For perspective, Coinbase had the second-highest market share at roughly 7.2% which is quite a significant gap. Although Lido stayed in the lead, it was worth noting that there was a category of unknown staking platform(s) that had a slightly higher share. Hence the anonymity means that Lido was leading by a technicality. But just how well has Lido faired during the recent slow market conditions?

Lido’s TVL achieves new historic high

Considering Q3’s slow performance of the cryptocurrency market Lido did experience some changes in its TVL. Regardless, Lido still maintained its position as a favorite staking platform as per recent data. An impressive feat considering the market’s sluggish performance during the month.

Source: DeFiLlama

Note that the chart represented the amount of ETH staked. The dollar value of the staked funds equates to over $14.7 billion.

LDO bears are running out of momentum but can the bulls take over?

Although Lido’s TVL maintained an upward trajectory, the LDO token slid considerably in the second half of July. It has so far given up most of the gains that it achieved in June and the first half of July.

However, the selling pressure witnessed a noticeable slowdown over the last few days. This meant that the bulls have a chance to regain dominance. LDO traded at $1.87 at press time.

Source: TradingView

Part of the reason for the potential upside expectations is the fact that LDO recently retested a short-term support level. Also, its Money Flow Index (MFI) dipped into overbought territory where we will likely see some accumulation. It already showed signs of some accumulation in the last two days.

Read Lido’s [LDO] price prediction 2023-24

LDO’s supply distribution metrics indicated that there was still some selling pressure coming from the second-largest whale address category. This was addressed by looking at the 1 million to 10 million LDO range. On the other hand, the same metric revealed that most other whale categories have been accumulating.

Source: Santiment

The fact that the cryptocurrency was still experiencing significant accumulation confirmed that there was demand. However, it is not enough for a sizable bounce and some whales are still suppressing the price.