It’s a bearish start to the week for the world’s second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, as it is unable to take out the key resistance level of $1,300. At the time of writing, ETH/USD is trading at around $1,142, down by over 3% over the past 24 hours.

Even as the king of dApps and smart contracts moves closer to migrating from proof of work consensus to proof of stake, Ethereum has been unable to reclaim key price levels amid uncertainties in the crypto market. The downfall of leading DeFi projects has hit the network pretty hard, home to the largest TVL in the DeFi market worldwide.

Despite some bullish price action last week after the second-to-last Merge trial on the Sepolia public testnet concluded successfully, Ether was unable to take out the key $1,300 level. This has led some analysts to forecast an additional spell of bearishness for the ETH/USD crypto pair in the short-term.

Meanwhile, CEO at MicroStrategy and a popular crypto influencer, Michael Saylor, shared in a recent interview that he thought of only Bitcoin as a commodity among digital assets. According to Saylor, Ethereum should obviously be classified as a security on account of ETH being issued via ICO and undergoing several changes since its inception.

On Sunday, ETH/USD experienced sharp sell-offs as the optimism surrounding the latest updates waned and uncertain market conditions resurfaced. Looking ahead, the mood in the crypto market could remain cautious as investors await data on US inflation. This data could shed more light on the Fed’s future path for rate hikes and determine how risk assets like stock markets and cryptos could move in the short-term.