The Ethereum Classic price jumped as much as 33.79-percent on Sunday, rocketing the cryptocurrency to a four-month high above $7.50.
Ethereum Classic Sets New 2019 High, Goes Crazy on Coinbase
CoinMarketCap data shows the Ethereum Classic price established an intraday high at $7.79, its best mark since November 16, 2018, on an hourly candle. On Coinbase, ETC formed higher highs towards $14, indicating that the demand on the US crypto trading platform was soaring compared to other exchanges. Whether or not US traders were able to benefit from the vast ETC price imbalance was unclear at this time of writing.
ETHEREUM CLASSIC (ETC) REACHES FOUR-MONTH HIGH THIS SUNDAY | SOURCE: COINMARKETCAP.COM
The bullish Sunday saw exchanges posting circa $1.238 billion worth of volume for the 24-hour period, with most trades concentrated in Tether, Bitcoin, and Ethereum markets. Hong Kong-based OKEx hosted almost 17-percent of ETC-enabled trades. Although Coinbase Pro advertised the highest ETC prices, it accounted for just 1.5-percent of the day’s volume.
Fundamental Factors Behind the Cryptocurrency’s Rally
Sunday’s rally followed Ethereum Classic‘s likelihood of upgrading its blockchain by implementing ECIP-1054, otherwise known as Atlantis. As stated on GitHub, the protocol upgrade will “enable the outstanding Ethereum Foundation Spurious Dragon and Byzantium network protocol upgrades on the Ethereum Classic network.” In other words, the blockchain will hard fork to create an upgraded chain.
A community-wide meeting was held among network participants to kickstart discussions about the proposed network upgrade ECIP-1054 nicknamed Atlantis.
ECIP-1054 Atlantis Network Upgrade Call — Recap by @MyEtherPlan #ClassicIsComing #EthereumClassic https://t.co/5EL68LtRGY
— Ethereum Classic (@eth_classic) April 7, 2019
The Ethereum Classic ecosystem expects to call a community vote to approve the hard fork. Any potential mutiny would leave the core developers with two options: either abandon the upgrade altogether or allow naysayers to go ahead with their original Ethereum Classic blockchain. All-and-all, ETC investors seem to have taken the news as bullish, which explains the ongoing rally.
At the same time, there is no guarantee that the bullish sentiment is stable. Coins undergoing an upgrade generally see a pre-hard fork rally. It happens because traders believe they would get to increase their stakes by receiving free forked tokens. The Bitcoin Cash price surged by $250 a week before its hard fork last year – only to crash soon after.
As of 19:22 UTC, the ETC-to-dollar rate had corrected towards $7.55, down 3.17-percent from its intraday high.