Earlier this month, a group of crypto miners started a campaign To protest the imminent merger of Ethereum—an event that End the practice of mining ETH— for forking the Ethereum Creating the network and in the process an alternative, stable-eatable form of ETH.
The new token proposed by these miners, ETHW, was the first to attract a fair amount of discussion, But barely a week after the token debuted on several crypto exchanges, it seems that ETHW has already lost a considerable amount of momentum.
since before Debuts on Crypto Exchange Poloniex As of August 8, the price of ETHW is down by about 62%, according to data from CoinMarketCap, At the moment, the IOU token of ETHW is trading at $52.59. In contrast, Ethereum is currently up 2% in the last day, although down about 1.3% over the past week.
Furthermore, 24-hour trading volume on the alternative coin is down more than 68%, from its peak of $13.8 million earlier in the month to $4.4 million today.
ETHW does not exist yet; Only if supporters of cryptocurrency are able to successfully hard forkOr split, the Ethereum network at the time of the merge, whether the alternative coin (and the network around it) will come into existence. Merge refers to the moment when Ethereum mainnet Combines with the Proof-of-Stake Beacon Series. This is expected to happen in mid-September and will mark the completion of the long-awaited transition of Ethereum to Proof of Stake.
However, some crypto exchanges believed that the hype and narrative surrounding the creation of alternative coins will generate enough interest To justify listing before ETHW even existed.
Over the past two weeks, Poloniex exchanged, Huobi, bitmexAnd— as recently as Tuesday, bitru– Started listing ETHW-affiliated financial products including futures and “IOU” tokens.
ETHW (IOU) currently cannot be returned or traded on exchanges; If the ETHW fork is successful, the investor’s ETHW (IOU) will be converted into the real thing at that point in time. If any ETHW does not materialize after the merger, the remaining ETHW (IOU) will be converted to ETH after the merger.
An analyst at BitMEX, one of the exchanges currently listing ETHW futures, acknowledged decrypt that’s ETHW Ethereum is unlikely to reach market cap or utility, But despite this, the exchange expressed optimism that the coin could provide “an exciting opportunity for traders and speculators in the short to medium term.”
But a few weeks ahead of the merger, the interest around ETHW seems to be fading quickly. This is bad news for supporters of the cryptocurrency: the influx of miners attempting to produce more ETHW after the merger is only likely to drive the price of ETHW further down.
“I expect that [ETHW] will not be sustainable,” Ethereum core developer Preston Van Loon previously reported decrypt, “There will not be enough buyers to absorb the constant selling pressure from miners and the currency will go to zero.”
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The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment or other advice.