Ethereum Classic Increases by 30%! This Is Behind the Price Rally

Ethereum Classic (ETC) has gained around 30 percent in value in the last 24 hours and has more than doubled its price since the beginning of the year. These are the backgrounds:

The cryptocurrency Ethereum Classic (ETC) is currently experiencing a considerable price rally. This morning, the coin hit this year all-time high of around $10.05. ETC has gained more than 100 percent in value since January 1, when the price was around $4.50. In the past 24 hours, the price increase was around 30 percent.

Image credit: CoinMarketCap

Ethereum Classic (ETC) futures on Binance

The reason for the rally, in addition to the generally positive mood on the crypto market, is likely to be a new offer from the world’s leading exchange Binance which launched ETC futures on Thursday. ETC futures can be traded with up to 75x leverage.

Another positive news for Ethereum Classic was the successful implementation of the Agharta hard fork last week. This update, named after a fictional country in the interior of the earth, makes some improvements from the Constantinople hard fork from Ethereum (ETH) also available for ETC.

Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC)

As the name suggests, Ethereum Classic is related to Ethereum (ETH). ETC and ETH went their separate ways in summer 2016. At that time, a large part of the Ethereum community decided to undo the so-called DAO hack and return their coins to stolen investors.

Another group, however, argued according to the motto “Code is law” that the blockchain should not be manipulated afterward. They continued to operate the unchanged chain and gave it the name Ethereum Classic.

Since then, the ETH and ETC have developed further apart: ETH strives to change its consensus algorithm from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS). The transition could be completed this summer and Phase 0 of Ethereum 2.0 could be launched. At least that’s what Ethereum developer Paul Hauner appreciates.

At ETC, on the other hand, users are satisfied with staying at PoW. The Ethereum Classic Twitter presence recently wrote:

“Proof-of-Work will be the ideal base layer in the #blockchain industry stack because it is orders of magnitude more secure than Proof-of-Stake and other consensus mechanisms.”

Author: Marko Vidrih

Featured image credit: Pixabay