The Ethereum Classic price is currently $ 4.97 with a 24-hour trading volume of $ 623.81M across 90 exchanges. The ETC price is up 2.82% in the last 24 hours. The Ethereum Classic price prediction sentiment is currently bearish. Ethereum Classic reached its highest price on January 14, 2018, when it was trading at its all-time high of $ 57.96. It has a circulating supply of 116.31M ETC with a total supply of 210.00M ETC. The best exchange for trading Ethereum Classic is Binance.

Ethereum Classic is one of the two crypto assets that emerged after a hard fork of the Ethereum network in 2016. Before the fork, there were strong disagreements within the Ethereum community on how to respond to the infamous DAO hack, in which a hacker exploited a vulnerability in the DAO's smart contract system, resulting in more than $50 million worth of ETH becoming inaccessible.

One part of the Ethereum community advocated for a hard fork in which the damage done by the DAO hacker would effectively be rolled back and erased from the blockchain's history. This part of the Ethereum community backed the Ethereum chain as we know it today, with ETH as its native asset.

The other part of the Ethereum community maintained that immutability was a crucial aspect of blockchains, even though it might sometimes lead to undesirable outcomes. This camp opposed the idea of a hard fork being used to essentially alter the history of what happened on the Ethereum blockchain. This part of the Ethereum community supported the side of the hard fork that is known today as Ethereum Classic, with ETC as its native asset. The consequences of the DAO hack are still present on the Ethereum Classic blockchain.

Key Ethereum Classic features:

The Ethereum Classic name was started being used in 2016 after the Ethereum community split in two opposing camps

Maintains the continuity of the Ethereum blockchain

Uses proof-of-work to secure the ledger of transactions and there's currently no plans to transition to proof-of-stake

Unlike with ETH, the total supply of ETC is capped

The basic premise of Ethereum Classic is the same as Ethereum's - users can create smart contracts and decentralized applications that leverage the security of the blockchain network. This is made possible through the Ethereum Virtual Machine, which is a Turing-complete virtual machine.

However, the two projects' roadmaps have major differences - for example, the Ethereum project is planning a transition to a proof-of-stake consensus model, while Ethereum Classic plans to stick with the existing proof-of-work model. Ethereum Classic has also implemented a maximum cap for the ETC supply (210.7 million coins), while there is no supply cap for ETH.