Altcoin prices ended the week on a high note Friday following a bad start.
Several top-100 coins posted huge gains compared to seven days earlier, and most cryptocurrencies were up for the third straight day after the week began with two days of consecutive declines. However, the market saw more choppy trading Friday than it had in the previous 48-hour period.
ETC to USD
Ethereum Classic price explodes
Ethereum Classic ((ETC) exploded about 60% from a week earlier. (All figures based on CoinMarketCap data.)
ETC’s gains appeared to reflect investors’ enthusiasm for Ethereum’s next hard fork, known as the Merge whereby the blockchain will convert to a proof-of-stake (POS) crypto mining mechanism from a proof-of-work (POW) mechanism, which is extremely energy-intensive.
The Merge will integrate Ethereum’s main network with the Beacon chain. Plans call for the merger to be completed in September.
ETH to USD
Increase sparks intense debate
ETC was Ethereum’s original coin prior to the blockchain’s hard fork in 2016, when ether ((ETH)
became the network’s top cryptocurrency. Ethereum Classic’s sharp increase in advance of the Merge has sparked some intense debate among investors about its long-term value.
It will still be possible for crypto miners to produce and market ETC through the POW mechanism after the Merge.
ETC was bolstered by a $10m investment this week from AntPool, a mining pool affiliated with giant crypto miner Bitmain Technologies. (A mining pool is a group of miners who combine their computational resources to improve the probability of find a block and mining more crypto, according to Investopedia.)
BCH to USD
Some analysts skeptical
But some analysts are skeptical about ETC’s future.
“This [AntPool expenditure] seems like a trade more than an investment,” Thomas Dunleavy, a senior analyst at crypto research firm…
