Ethereum Classic – past, present and future

Contents

• What is Ethereum Classic (ETC)?
• Analysis of Ethereum Classic
• How Ethereum Classic came to be
• The DAO. The theft that started ETH
• The first steps of Ethereum Classic. Currency entering exchanges
• Ethereum Classic project. The main principle of ETC
• Where to buy Ethereum Classic cryptocurrency
• Wallet for storing ETC
• ETC outlook for 2022. Is Ethereum Classic worth buying?

What is Ethereum Classic (ETC)?

Cryptocurrency forks are one of the riskiest investments. Throughout the history of the digital market, there have often been situations where another fork of a well-known digital currency was released, and after reaching the next level of the coin’s exchange rate, the project was successfully abandoned.

However, this does not happen with all forks and there are some very decent and promising options on the market for investing their funds, which can bring investors a huge profit in the long term.

One such asset is the Ethereum Classic (ETC) coin. This cryptocurrency can be very interesting for its high yield, even despite the fact that it is a fork. Once in 2016, just after the release of ETC, this currency started trading at just 70 cents apiece, and after two years of successful existence on the digital market, ETC in January 2018 was already worth about $46. At its peak, crypto reached $134 in 2021. The price is now at $26.

Accordingly, those investors who invested their money in this asset in time were able to increase their capital by almost 66 times.

However, even despite such a successful development of the project, there are a lot of contradictory rumors about ETC on the Internet. And many users just don’t understand – is it possible to trust Ethereum Classic? Is it worth buying ETC at this moment? Does this project have any prospects or is it a scam that was created just to steal money?

Today’s article will try to answer these questions and talk about this cryptocurrency, about the main idea of the project, about the history of this Blockchain company and about its growth perspectives. After reading this article, you will surely be able to form your own opinion about this project and evaluate it on all its merits.

Analysis of Ethereum Classic

In CoinMarketCap list of the best cryptocurrencies, Ethereum Classic occupies the 34 place at the middle of March 2022. The capitalization of this Blockchain project is more than $3.5 billion, the price per coin is about $26. The issue is limited to 210,700,000 ETCs and it is possible to mine ETCs.

How Ethereum Classic came to be

As mentioned earlier, Ethereum Classic is a fork of the Ethereum cryptocurrency.  So, before we describe the appearance of ETC, we should talk a bit about Ethereum currency itself and the creation of the famous blockchain project The DEX, which is connected with ETC creation.

Ethereum cryptocurrency is a decentralized application platform based on smart contracts technology. This system allows automatic transactions between people without interference from anyone outside.

This technology certainly appealed to many programmers, who wanted to create their own cryptocurrency on the Ethereum platform. As a result, the Ethereum Foundation began to grow very quickly in the digital currency market. And in a short time, it was able to find many supporters in the form of big investors and strong support in the cryptocurrency community.

Even very large companies of that time began to test the system for professional suitability and try to create their own Blockchain projects on it, one of which is The DAO.

The DAO. The theft that started ETH

To begin with, it is worth explaining what The DAO is all about. This company is a kind of large investment fund, which was based on the then developing Ethereum system. The DAO had its own tokenized system and a fully decentralized economy.

This Blockchain project seemed very interesting to many investors. Users invested their money in it, hoping for the development of the company and further perspective. As a result, The DAO was able to raise a very large investment at the time, more than $100 million.

However, shortly after The DAO Blockchain Project came to market, there was a very unpleasant incident caused by a hacker attack on the company during which investors’ funds were stolen. At the time, millions of dollars in Ethereum cryptocurrency were stolen from The DAO. The main reason the company was hacked was a vulnerability in the code of the smart contract on which the project was created.

As a result of this incident, the price of DEX digital shares, as well as the Ethereum currency itself, fell almost twice almost immediately. In general, the companies were on the verge of their existence and were slowly losing their credibility, so extreme measures were needed.

The first thing Ethereum Foundation developers did was track down that hacker and freeze his account with the stolen cryptocurrency. However, they couldn’t just return the funds to DAO, for that they had to change the system code of ETH. That’s why the development team decided to make a hard fork to roll back the moment when the theft occurred and return investors’ funds.

However, not all members of the Ethereum team agreed with this decision, as it implied centralized interference in the Blockchain system code and substituted the main idea of Ethereum about “full decentralization of the system and non-interference of people in the smart contracts process”.

On the other hand, by rejecting this opportunity to create a fork of the cryptocurrency and compensate people for the loss of $50 million that was stolen from the DEX project, the developers would preserve full decentralization of the system, but they would have to pay for the damage themselves. After all, they were to blame for introducing users to their “raw” product, which had critical vulnerabilities.

In short, the situation was ambiguous. Part of the community was in favor of creating the fork of ETH and changing the system code of Blockchain, while others were against it. As the result, most of the community still decided to compensate the users for that considerable damage by changing the Ethereum code and forget about their principle of complete decentralization.

After that decision, the network split in two and a new digital asset called Ethereum Classic appeared.

The first steps of Ethereum Classic. Currency entering exchanges

ETC was born in July 2016. Immediately after entering the digital market, this asset managed to surprise everyone by being listed on such a well-known exchange as Poloniex, which, as you know, simply does not add little-known and unreliable projects to its list of cryptocurrencies.

And this, in turn, shows that Ethereum Classic is not just a fork of Ethereum, but a full-fledged asset with its own perspective.

A few days after trading, ETC was able to grow in price and capitalization by more than 250%, overtaking Ethereum. At that time, the capitalization of the Ethereum Classic project was able to reach over $250 million.

However, despite such growth that seemed very natural, later it turned out that Ethereum Classic’s development was caused not by investors’ trust to this project or by the support of a powerful developer community, but by a planned speculation of ETC coin by a great number of traders on Poloniex exchange. That’s why the capitalization and rate of ETC were very unstable and very volatile, due to traders’ short positions, on which they were able to make a lot of money at that time.

But in the end, such manipulations did not undermine Ethereum Classic’s credibility and did not stop its development.

Soon after adding ETC to Poloniex, many other exchanges also began to adopt this digital asset and add it to their sales list. The most famous of them are Bittrex and Kraken. And of course, each time listing ETC on a new trading platform significantly boosted its price, capitalization and the overall development of the project.

In addition, the development of Ethereum Classic was influenced by the fact that this system retained the possibility of mining. And since the complexity of mining the asset was easier than the Ethereum currency, many miners around the world and some mining pools preferred to mine this coin rather than its competitor.

Ethereum Classic Project. The main principle of ETC

ETC can be presented as a secure platform for creating decentralized applications (dApp).

This coin is almost a full copy of Ethereum cryptocurrency, but at the same time ETC has fully preserved its original system code and has not been somehow changed by the developers, as this is the main principle of this company – to be an independent platform, which itself performs transactions based on smart contracts.

The development of this cryptocurrency is primarily engaged in two teams: ETCdevteam and Grothendieck, which are fully dedicated to the development of the project.

The main principle of this project, which the developers put above all, is the belief in the principle of decentralization, which under no circumstances will not be changed. The founders of the company believe that their Blockchain system should function by itself on the basis of smart contracts, without any interference from the outside.

And if the Blockchain code is ever changed for any reason, it will no longer be the original Ethereum, but only its failed parody.

Where to buy Ethereum Classic cryptocurrency

Digital currency ETC is quite a popular asset, so you can buy it at many of the best cryptocurrency exchanges without any problems.

The largest volume of trades on the digital market happens on the Binance trading platform. The daily sales volume of this coin on this exchange is about $322 million. In general, the demand and supply of ETCs there is quite enough, all orders are processed quickly and without any delays.

The most popular trading platforms, trading ETCs:

• Binance
• Huobi
• Bitfinex
• HitBTC
• Poloniex
• Kraken
• Bittrex
• KuCoin

Wallet for storing ETC

At the moment, there are a lot of wallets for storing Ethereum Classic cryptocurrency. Of course, you can store this currency on the trading platform where you purchased it, but it is not the most secure way, because not only you have access to your wallet, but also exchange’s developers. That’s why you should prefer more reliable options for storing your coins – cryptocurrency wallets.

One of the good options for online storing of ETCs is presented on our website. This wallet is free and very easy to use. With it you can get started with ETCs in just a few seconds.

There are several other options of free online wallets, which have a user-friendly interface and strong protection – these are Mist and Jaxx.

If you want maximum protection for your cryptocurrency, then order the Ledger Nano S cold storage hardware wallet, which also supports the ETC digital asset. This type of wallet is the most reliable and secure place to store your cryptocurrencies, because Ledger wallets have not yet been hacked by anyone. However, for such pleasure you have to pay about 70-150 euros.

For this fee you will get by mail a special device to connect to your PC, through which a safe connection will occur to your personal account with cryptocurrency.

ETC outlook for 2022. Is Ethereum Classic worth buying?

To summarize this article, we can draw some conclusions about the ETC cryptocurrency, which is a fork of the well-known Ethereum currency. This asset is an established platform for creating decentralized applications, which has its own clear ideology and a strong belief in a decentralized system based on smart contacts.

The ETC project has found many followers from the beginning, who happily invested their money in it, allowing the company to grow and compete with other digital assets. This, in turn, shows that users trust Ethereum Classic, and this is the best marker in the world of cryptocurrencies for the project’s future prospects and successful development.

Moreover, as history shows, this currency immediately after coming on the market, began to add to its sales list the most popular and reliable crypto exchanges like Poloniex, Kraken, Binance, which just once again proves that ETC is not just a fork, but a solid digital currency with its own advantages and a transparent and successful future.

All in all, ETC cryptocurrency, which kept Ethereum community’s original belief in decentralization, proved itself very well in the digital market, and many investors have already invested a lot of money into this coin. 

The future prospects of Ethereum Classic in 2022 is to take its place in the top 10 of the best cryptocurrencies and increase its value by several times.

And while this asset is still quite cheap, you can buy it for little money, adding it to your investment portfolio and leaving it for further storage in your wallet. Such an investment will not be a 100% guarantee of profit in the future, but you can save your savings for sure.