Ethereum’s Market Cap Reaches $200M for the First Time Ever as Bitcoin’s Volatility is Back
The recent surge in Bitcoin price amidst stock exchange turmoil and capital outflows from China has been brusquely interrupted by the new round of Bitcoin scalability dispute. Providing that neither the current Bitcoin Core team nor Bitcoin NXT can find a middle ground, the bullying of each opinion group finally resulted in a somewhat hysterical departure of a NXT founder and an authoritative Bitcoin developer.
This, in its turn, disturbed the market even greater, and may have originated even more uncertainty or to some extent panic as to the cryptocurrency’s future. However, it brings good news to traders, as the Bitcoin Volatility is back again.
It seems Bitcoin trading is a bit more popular these days:
What else should a lonely trader do when market is turbulent?
However, this is not the only news for the time being, as major reshuffle happened recently in the altcoins scene. According to data from Coinmarketcap.com, the Ethereum market cap gained more than 75% during the last week, reaching $200M for the first time in its yet short history. The price increase might have followed the recent rise in Ether trading volumes:
We earlier reported that Ethereum tooked the third position in the cryptocurrencies market capitalization rating. However, today it’s the second to no one else but Bitcoin, effectively outperforming Ripple payment network in interbanking remittance services by almost 19%.
The Ethereum community on Reddit also seems to be curious about the sources of the price change.
Some credit it with previous undervaluation of Ethereum and current slow but steady adoption.
“Nothing has changed intrinsically about Ethereum. It was an amazing development in computer technology in August, and it still is today. What is slowly changing is awareness and appreciation.
It takes a couple weeks of effort for a person to wrap their mind around what Ethereum really is. The price rise should draw in people familiar with cryptocurrency. Some of them will put in the work and get a deeper understanding and become dedicated ethernauts.
I’m predicting an extended rally as the general crypto community become aware of and understand Ethereum better. That is not trading advice,” Reddit user /u/McPeeb comments in the related thread.
The others connects the sudden increase of the exchange rate with the planned migration of Ethereum to Proof-of-Stake mechanism:
“I wonder if the rise in price is due to some of the POS talk a month ago. Specifically the part about requiring 1500 ETH minimum to participate,” says/u/ev1501.
Adding to the equation, there was a series of spam messages sent to many if not all /r/bitcoin users from multiple fresh accounts; those messages attempted to urge them to abandon bitcoin in favor Ethereum.
A spokesperson for Ethereum and its inventor, Vitalik Buterin, however, distanced himself and the project from having to do anything with the campaign. While the origin of the letters remains unknown, their most likely goal was to turn the community against Ethereum – which, according to the recent tidings, they completely failed at. On the other hand, however unlikely, we might still assume that the campaign was as straightforward as possible – then we should consider it quite successful.
Whoever is spamming about ethereum to /r/bitcoin users, please stop; it's annoying and counterproductive
— Vitalik Non-giver of Ether (@VitalikButerin) January 17, 2016
Other theories tend to develop completely tinfoil assumptions like some kind of insider trading, leakage of some important information on the cryptocurrency’s further trials, or already huge number of people getting exhausted from Bitcoin’s alleged insolvency that leave it in favor of Ethereum. However, there is little or no evidence as to that. However, the most reasonable conclusion is that the reason for the rapid exchange rate growth might be the success of recent test of R3CEV’s Blockchain network, being powered by Ethereum.
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