Ethereum Classic price is the highest it’s been in over a year

Ethereum Classic (ETC), which holds the eleventh spot on the crypto industry’s list of top coins by market capitalization, is currently experiencing a huge boost in its price.

Yesterday, the coin was trading for as low as $9.16 per coin, according to data from Messari. Fast forward 24 hours later, and ETC shot up to as much as $11.43 per coin—a gain of 24 percent.

But that’s not even the half of it.

If we zoom out, Ethereum Classic is so far one of the year’s top-performing altcoins. On January 1, ETC was trading at a mere $4.48 per token. Today’s price jump means ETC holders are now up close to 150 percent on the year.

The increased interest in Ethereum Classic could be due to several reasons. For example, ETC Labs—a research division of Ethereum Classic—last week pledged $1 million to the United Nations agency UNICEF to fund blockchain startups that could potentially tackle some of the world’s most-pressing social issues.

In addition, digital asset manager Grayscale Investments has agreed to fund the non-profit ETC Cooperative for another two years so that the organization can continue to support development projects on the ETC protocol.

And according to Bob Summerwill, executive director of the ETC Cooperative, Ethereum Classic is likely to attract several more decentralized finance (DeFi) products to its blockchain in 2020. “DeFi projects could target ETC very easily. I expect to be talking to many DeFi projects in the coming months,” he said during an AMA hosted by Messari last week.

Meanwhile, the rest of the crypto market saw mixed results today. Bitcoin, for example, has held on and continues to trade above $9,000 per coin for the second day in a row. Ethereum and XRP have seen only marginal gains of about 1 percent, while Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV are down today between 1 and 6 percent, respectively.

But another big winner today is Cardano, which spiked 15 percent early this morning past the $0.05 per coin mark following news that it was partnering with global consultancy firm PwC to market and further promote the Cardano ecosystem.