Aster: Investors flee, trading activity crumbles – Price risks a new yearly low

Key Takeaways

What triggered Aster’s 10% price decline?

Aster’s price drop followed $326 million in TVL outflows and a sharp fall in trading volume to $78 million, signaling waning protocol usage.

What does the technical outlook reveal?

With the MACD forming a death cross and Aroon Down near 93%, momentum favors bears—raising risk of a slide toward $0.7 or $0.5.

Aster [ASTER], the decentralized perpetual protocol, has witnessed real churn as broader market conditions deteriorate.

Investors who were once bullish have started selling off their holdings. In fact, chart analysis shows that the asset now faces a much higher downside risk.

AMBCrypto analyzed the current state of ASTER and what it means for traders.

Usage drops affect ASTER

Aster’s 10% decline in the past day could be linked to reduced usage.

According to DeFiLlama, the protocol’s TVL—which measures the total value of investors’ assets locked in for protocol usage—has dropped notably.

Between the 13th of October till the time of publication, investors sold off around $362 million worth of ASTER, indicating that sentiment shifted sharply from bullish to bearish within a week.

Source: DeFiLlama

The decline in the protocol’s perpetual trading volume over the past day serves as further proof.

Data shows that Aster’s total trading volume on its perpetual exchange fell to just $78 million in the last 24 hours. For comparison, Lighter and Hyperliquid [HYPE] recorded $10.14 billion and $8.06 billion, respectively.

This stark difference highlights that users are moving away from Aster, weighing heavily on the token’s performance.

Critical juncture reached

Technical analysis indicated that ASTER hit a critical juncture, with its next move likely to have a significant impact on price.

At press time, the asset traded within a low-demand zone between $1.03 and $1.14.

This region historically represents low liquidity and weak rebounds—in five past instances where the asset entered this level, price recovery has been minimal.

Source: TradingView

Typically, this pattern suggests a high likelihood of a further drop. There are two key downward targets if this decline continues—the first at $0.7 and the lower at $0.5.

However, if market momentum shifts, ASTER could rebound from this demand zone and begin a short-term recovery.

Momentum favors bears

Market indicators show that momentum remains heavily bearish.

The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) has formed a death cross—a pattern that typically precedes a major price decline—as the blue MACD line crossed below the orange signal line.

Source: TradingView

Adding to this bearish outlook, the Aroon Indicator has also flashed a similar signal. At press time, the Aroon Down (blue line) stood at 92.86%, above the Aroon Up (orange line) at 50.00%.

This indicates that traders’ bias currently leans toward selling, putting ASTER at risk of dropping further from its current demand zone.