Binance Coin’s price has formed a significant cup and handle pattern as its ecosystem continues to expand ahead of the Pascal update.

Binance Coin (BNB), the fifth-largest cryptocurrency, was trading at $660 on Friday, up 30% from its lowest point this month.

The next potential catalyst for BNB’s price is the upcoming Pascal hard fork, scheduled for activation in March.

This will be an important update for the network as it will introduce better Ethereum compatibility, smart contract wallets, and more tools to build better decentralized applications or dApps.

Pascal will be one of the few scheduled BNB Chain upgrades this year. It will be followed by Lorentz in April and Maxwell in June. These upgrades will aim to reduce the block reward time from 1.5 seconds to 0.75 seconds.

These upgrades come at a time when the BNB Chain is doing relatively well. For example, it has flipped Solana (SOL) and Ethereum (ETH) in terms of decentralized exchange volume. It handled over $21.48 billion in the last seven days, higher than Solana’s $21.31 billion and Ethereum’s $13.5 billion.

BNB Chain’s total value locked in the ecosystem has risen to $5.7 billion, while the bridged TVL has soared to $14 billion. Its stablecoin market cap has soared to $6.9 billion. 

BNB price technical analysis

The two-week chart indicates that BNB’s price has been consolidating this year, forming an ascending channel connecting higher highs and higher lows since December. This price movement aligns with the development of a cup and handle pattern, a bullish indicator in technical analysis.

BNB has now reached a key resistance level at $667, marking the upper boundary of the C&H pattern, whose depth is 70%.

If this pattern holds, BNB’s price could surge to $1,125 in the long term, representing a 70% increase from current levels. However, the bullish outlook would be invalidated if BNB drops below $505, its lowest point this month.