Due to an upcoming major update, Ethereum and Ethereum Classic continue to attract more attention among investors. The leading altcoin has gained 60% since last month, while ETC grew 173.4% in the same time frame. So, is it just a merge that triggers these gains?
Miners migrate to ETC network
Despite a brief pullback to $23.42 on July 26, ETC price is back to a steady rally. According to CMC data, ETC is still among the top 5 highest earning altcoins. The tremendous rise of ETC is due to several factors. One of them is that Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin said he supports the PoW mechanism that supports the ETC network. As the Ethereum Merge scheduled for September approaches, Vitalik stated that ETC may remain functional within Ethereum. As Kriptokoin.com, we have quoted the explanations in this article.
September 19, Ethereum network aims to move from mining to PoS Blockchain. Therefore, months ago, miners started migrating to the Ethereum Classic network. As a result, the ETC price gained 200%, accompanied by the increased hash rate. On the other hand, ETH price is also exhibiting similar price movements due to the long-awaited merger.
Reached ATH in number of leading altcoin wallets
Ethereum’s daily active address count has reached the ATH level, surpassing the previous peak by 50%. This huge increase came amid recent developments on the merge front. According to IntoTheBlock data, more than 1.1 million addresses traded ETH on July 27, bringing the total number of transactions to 1.64 million.
Ethereum daily active addresses reached a new all-time high
Over 1.1M addresses made an $ETH transaction yesterday, making a total of 1.64M transactions pic.twitter.com/as21hvRZFc
— IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) July 27, 2022
Another on-chain data source Glassnode shared that the number of wallets holding more than 10 ETH has registered a new ATH. According to the data, the number of wallets currently holding at least 1 ETH on the Ethereum network is 1,566,309. The number of investors holding at least 10 ETH rose to 310,656, reaching ATH.
https://twitter.com/glassnodealerts/status/1553353515338240003
What does this data mean for Ethereum Classic?
After reaching a record high in May 2022, the hash rate of the Ethereum network has entered a downward trend. This indicates that miners paused or shut down their platforms in the weeks before the merge. On the other hand, miners can also become stakers on Ethereum’s PoS network if they wish.
However, there has also been an increase in the number of social media threads indicating that the miners’ strategy after the merge will likely be to switch to the more profitable PoW chain. According to the data, as of July 29, Ethereum Classic was attracting the attention of miners with a weekly profitability of 116%.
In the overall picture, ETC price gained greater momentum ahead of the merge. However, this does not take away the fact that Ethereum Classic is a very small project compared to Ethereum. As of June 29, Ethereum Classic had more than 53,000 daily active addresses against Ethereum’s 763,000.
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