The classic price of Ethereum doubled almost this week before the first phase of the new monetary policy was performed in the Ethereum Classic protocol.
A week ago, the ETC price of the ether was 18 USD, and it remained until the end of the week when, like many cryptocurrencies, it got a whipping after the holiday. ETC went into the new week at 22 USD and stayed there until Monday afternoon.
At approximately 12:05 UTC, the Classic Ethereum price dropped graphics at a high velocity, and by Tuesday it reached 26 USD – a record high. At this point, the trading volume exploded, and the ETC became violent, adding another 8 USD to bring it to a current value of 34 USD. This represents a weekly increase of around 90% and gives the ETC a ceiling of more than 3.3 billion bucks, putting it in ninth place in the ranking.
As is often the case, the meeting was led by South Korean traders. ETC / KRW represents more than 60% of the 24-hour trading volume of ETC, most of which focus on Bithumb. This trading pair is evaluated at a premium of 10% above ETC / USD, ETC / BTC, which trades below 32 USD on Bitfinex and OKEx, respectively.
The justification of the rally seems to be the next implementation of ECIP 1017, an update of the protocol that permanently changes the financial supply of Ethereum Classic. The heavy fork – which was activated a month ago – reduces the reward of the Ethereum Classic block over time until the currency supply reaches a heavy cover of about 210 million to 230 million coins. The first 20% reduction will take place at the 500,000 block-height, which should be deployed in about two weeks.
Nevertheless, this update of the protocol has been planned since the beginning of the year, so it is hard to see that it would have such an intense effect on the Ethereum Classic at this time. Consequently, given the climb rate, the lack of an apparent trigger and the powerful concentration of trading volume on the Korean stock exchanges, it would not be surprising if at least part of this race is the result of a coordinated pump.