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Ethereum Classic About To Make Its Move?

Posted on by Conor Maloney

Is Ethereum Classic about to shoot for the moon?

Nothing is ever certain in the world of crypto-investment, but sometimes there are key indicators that can help keep traders and HODLers informed. I’m not just talking about TA here either – Ethereum Classic (ETC) has seen a lot of recent developments that could combine into the perfect storm that could help bring the currency to the next level.

Let’s start with the first general factor and move onto the more current affairs in the ETC space that are worth paying attention to.

Similarities to Bitcoin

One of the lesser-known aspects of Ethereum Classic is that ita origin story draws a lot of parallels with that of Bitcoin, arguably making it one of the closest things to Bitcoin there is.

Ethereum Classic didn’t have an ICO and doesn’t engage in transaction rollbacks – that’s pretty much the foundation of the formation of the project. The DAO hack led to a rift in the Ethereum community that resulted in a hard fork in which many of the original developers continued with the Ethereum project, agreeing to a rollback to return the lost funds.

Ethereum Classic supporters felt that this was the antithesis of blockchain and cryptocurrency technology and that the blockchain should be immutable, mirroring the core beliefs of the Bitcoin community. Ethereum Classic also runs off the Proof of Work model with no plans to change to PoS like Ethereum. While the cost to the environment is higher, PoS comes with centralization issues that the Ethereum Classic community are unwilling to risk.

Added to Coinbase

Coinbase recently announced the listing of Ethereum Classic, something which could prove major for upwards price movement.

Final testing for ETC support is now wrapping up and Coinbase Pro will be open for inbound ETC transfers on August 07 of this year.

Along with the listing comes a bunch of other features, such as Coinbase custody – the team is adding support for inbound transfers and withdrawals, an insurance protocol that will enable institutional traders to deal in ETC as well as more casual investors.

The market team is adding market support and allowing 24–48 hours of transfers through Pro/Prime before opening the markets once liquidity is high enough.

ETC transactions soared to almost 50,000 in one day in preparation for the listing as users accumulate in the hopes that the price will moon.

Roadmap and Team

The ETC team are taking a more conservative approach compared to the Ethereum project, where progress moves at a breakneck pace – and then breaks things. While Ethereum has often been accused of throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, ETC has a ‘slow and steady wins the race’ methodology – and they’ve been sticking to it.

Most recently the team removed the ‘difficulty bomb’ placed by the original developers. Aimed to discourage the miners from the Proof of Work system and force the PoS switchover, the bomb was essentially a failsafe that would eliminate the miner rewards and as such remove any incentive for miners to validate transactions, something that would have totally killed the project.

The team was able to defuse the difficulty bomb on time and keep things moving. Next up is sharding for chain scaling, a light app for IoT and mobile, followed by mesh networks in 2020.

ETC is headed up by Igor Artamonov who is the CTO and a Founder – Artamonov is a professional software developer since 2001, have been writing code since 1995. Scalable, decentralized, distributed and fault-tolerant applications, storing and processing big data, security and encryption. 

Big Backers

I’m talking here, of course, about Barry Silbert, a major investor tirelessly evangelizing ETC. But it’s not Silbert alone – he owns and founded Grayscale Investments which made a major investment in ETC and even set up an Ethereum Classic Investment Trust.
“ETC Trust enables investors to gain exposure to the price movement of ETC through a traditional investment vehicle, without the challenges of buying, storing, and safekeeping ETC.”
Silbert personally invested at $0.50 two years ago, seeing his investment rise over 90 times in value. He also founded Digital Currency Group, a company that funds promising entrepreneurs as an “angel investor” and invests in cryptocurrency. Silbert claims the company almost never trades, and favors holding tokens long-term instead. At the end of last year, DCG held over $600 million worth of cryptocurrency, and 90% of that was in Bitcoin, Zcash, and Ethereum Classic.
DCG funded CoinDesk, BitPay, and Ripple, and went on to buy CoinDesk in 2016 – a major player to have backing ETC.

The ETC cooperative report details over $1 million in donations along with almost doubling the social media following on Twitter and Reddit and doubling the amount of daily transactions to nearly 50,000. The goal of the cooperative is to support the ETC “community, development, and marketing efforts within the Ethereum Classic ecosystem” with the intention of making it better by “removing pain points and obstacles that interfere with ETC’s current and future users”.

Asian Support

Finally, ETC has been steadily gaining support throughout Asian markets. A major conference called the Ethereum Classic Summit is due to be held in Korea on 12-13 September 2018 with speakers like Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson along with Grayscale, Coinbase, and ETC reps, and Fundstrat’s Thomas Lee. Lee describes Ethereum Classic as a “hybrid coin” between Ethereum and Bitcoin and recommends it as an investment to his clients.
As newsbtc.com pointed out in a piece entitled “Asian Cryptocurrency Trading Update: Ethereum Classic The Only Winner,” in June, ETC was the only coin to continue performing well in the Asian markets during the market decline, pumping 25% despite the bearish trends. CryptoCompare also shows data on how ETC is being purchased more strongly in Asian exchanges, meaning it may be performing well despite the fact that it has yet to truly break into the western market – such a breakthrough may be on the way.

Recent bullish news coupled with the support seen in the Asian markets means the future could be looking up for Ethereum Classic, making it our pick for cryptocurrencies to keep an eye on over the coming weeks and months.

Or days – following the recent Coinbase announcement, ETC is up 14% at the time of writing.

Remember folks, Crypto is comin!

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Interested in other cool crypto posts….check out Uncorrelated assets, the “holy grail” of portfolio allocation.and The Price of Bitcoin vs Cost of Mining.

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