• STX surged by 17.88% in the last seven days as an analyst eyed $2.78.
• Stacks’ anticipated Nakamoto upgrade drove STX’s trading volume by 136.23%.

In the last 24 hours, the crypto market has experienced significant volatility, with Bitcoin [BTC] dropping below $60k to $58k. Major altcoins have not been exceptional as well, with increased liquidation in the past day.

However, Stacks [STX] has defied the market trend to continue with sustained gains. Notably, STX has experienced moderate price gains over the past three weeks.

As of this writing, STX was trading at $1.74. This marked a 1.15% rise over the last 1 hour and a 1.62% rise over the past 24 hours.

Prior to this, the altcoin was enjoying a considerable price surge. In the last seven days, the price of STX has increased by 17.88%.

Despite these gains, STX remained below its last month’s high of $2.04 and still 55.61% below ATH reached five months ago.

Therefore, the current surge raises questions about what’s driving STX’s prevailing market conditions.

What’s driving STX’s surge?

One of the factors driving STX’s current market condition is the highly anticipated Nakamoto upgrade. According to Stacks’s official X (formerly Twitter) page, the upgrade is expected to happen on the 28th of August.

While Stacks usually takes 10 minutes to confirm transactions and create a block of BTC, the Nakamoto upgrade will improve speed to five seconds.

Equally, the ecosystem will experience scalability, lesser fees, and faster confirmation of transactions. Thus, the upgrade will make the Stacks ecosystem better, faster, and more secure, which is essential for traders.

Market sentiment

As the Stacks community awaits the Nakamoto’s upgrade, analysts are betting big on STX’s prospects. Inasmuch, crypto analyst Decilizer predicted a new ATH if the current market condition holds.

In his analysis, he posited that the altcoin will likely reach the $2.78 target, noting,

” After establishing support at $1.46, It is all set to cross our next target of $2.78.”

According to this analysis, STX will experience a 59.77% growth. He supported this analogy with the previous 570% growth in the previous bull run.

What price charts suggest

Although Decilizer’s analysis offered a promising future outlook, it’s essential to determine what other metrics indicate.

For starters, STX’s OI-Weighted Funding Rate has remained positive for the past week. This showed higher demand for long positions, with many investors betting for the altcoin’s prices to gain those going shorts.

This is a bullish market sentiment, which reinforces investor confidence.

AMBCrypto’s analysis of Santiment also showed a positive Funding Rate aggregated by the exchange over the past seven days.

This further supported the demand for long positions, suggesting that the majority of participants were optimistic about STX’s future price direction.

Read Stacks’ [STX] Price Prediction 2024–2025

Therefore, with a strong upward momentum, as indicated by DMI with a positive index above the negative index, STX is well positioned for further gains.

If the current market conditions hold, STX will break out of the $2.0 resistance level, thus positioning the altcoin to challenge the $2.5 resistance level.