Barely a week after setting its former all-time high of $44.80, Ethereum Classic has more than trebled in value. At 7 pm yesterday, the coin set an ATH of $157.30.
Though the price has since dipped to $142.18, Ethereum Classic has bulldozed its way into the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
At the start of the year, ETC was worth between $5 and $6. The coin has since steadily grown in value, but the bulk of its explosive price movement occurred over the past week.
Today, the coin has a market cap of $17.88 billion. It added $5 billion of that in the last 24 hours alone.
Ethereum what?
Though it sports a very famous name and logo, Ethereum Classic shouldn’t be written off as an Ethereum knockoff. It has a long shared history with Ethereum. You could even say it’s the original Ethereum.
In April 2016, the DAO was released on the Ethereum blockchain. At the time, the DAO was the first of its kind: a Decentralized Autonomous Organisation, essentially an entity on Ethereum which mimicked the governance of a shareholder-run company.
The DAO did this through the use of smart contracts, or self-enforcing financial contracts—a concept reintroduced to the world through Ethereum.
In June 2016, however, attackers exploited a flaw in the DAO smart contract that enabled them to abscond with $55 million in ETH.
After the heist, the Ethereum network held a vote. Ethereum’s creator, Vitalik Buterin, led a group that proposed to delete these illicit transactions from the blockchain. The group created a new version of the blockchain that edited those transactions out. They continued under the name Ethereum.
Those in favor of keeping the offending transactions on the blockchain continued under the name Ethereum Classic.
Though Ethereum Classic is, technically, the original Ethereum blockchain, it lags far behind in adoption.
The crypto world, for the most part, hard forked with Buterin and co to support Ethereum, which now stands as the second biggest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $401 billion.
Ethereum Classic has also had a checkered history when it comes to security. The network fell victim to multiple 51% attacks in the last year, though this has done little to alter its price.
It may get a bad rap for being the “wrong Ethereum,” but ETC is one of this week’s highest movers.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.