According to CoinMarketCap, with anticipation building for the Ethereum merger next month, the price of Ethereum Classic (ETC) hit a four-month high of $42.29 per coin today, up 15% in 24 hours, from a slightly lower low for the day. Earlier ,
Ethereum Classic is a hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain co-founded by Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood. While both Ethereum forks point to 2015 as their launch, the Ethereum blockchain was withdrawn and relaunched in 2016 following the hack of the DAO project, leading to a split within the Ethereum community.
Those who did not support the relaunch maintained the original Ethereum blockchain, which was renamed Ethereum Classic. Unlike Ethereum, which has no limit on the total number of coins, Ethereum Classic is capped at 210.7 million ETC.
Currently, ETC is the nineteenth largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $5.6 billion.
While no longer part of the wider Ethereum network, ETC is seeing a spike in activity, thanks to an increase in the move from proof of work to proof of stake which Ethereum will soon begin.
Notably, as the merger nears, some members of the Ethereum community are again debating whether to perform another hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain in order to preserve the proof-of-work approach. Prominent Chinese crypto personality Chandler Guo recently suggested the creation of ETHPOW.