Bitcoin seems hooked on a feeling at the moment. A very, flat, dull, listless kind of feeling, that is. Meanwhile there’s some altcoin movements here and there, with the forgotten Ethereum – Ethereum Classic – grabbing headlines.

 

Ethereum Classic a recycled hit with crypto miners

Just to clarify, we’re not talking about the Ethereum breakaway upstart that most in the industry know as the true Ethereum. Not the bull-goose, Merge-tastic, no.2-on-the-charts ETH.

Ethereum Classic (ETC) may be the original, but it ain’t regarded as the best. That said, crypto miners seem to be digging it this week. The rogue blockchain, which is, and will remain a proof-of-work (PoW) mining protocol, is starting to pick up some momentum of its own pre-Merge.

At the time of writing, ETC is up 21.6% over the past 24 hours, and rising, according to CoinGecko data.

Ethereum’s merge to proof of stake is partly responsible for fuelling this renewed interest in ETC. Because the Merge will completely scrap mining from the main ETH chain, ETC seems to be gaining traction as a go-to place for the nerdiest form of “mining” known to humankind.

There is, as we’ve recently covered with David Angliss from Apollo Capital and Finder’s Fred Schebesta, still the likelihood of a different PoW chain forking around the time of the Merge (Sept 15 or 16 depending on time zones). And that will present possible chaos, possible opportunity regarding a set of duplicated tokens on the new ETH PoW chain.

However, it’s interesting to see this Ethereum Classic spike in the meantime. Its price rally is no doubt also being fuelled by a handful of top mining pools throwing it their support, including Ethermine, Antpool and now BTC.com , which has launched a dedicated Ethereum Classic pool with “zero-fee” mining for three months.

Even Ethereum talisman Vitalik Buterin has no problem with the original Ether blockchain, who described it as a welcoming community and “a totally fine chain” for those who want to mine.

Buterin also recently criticised the upcoming ETH PoW fork led by prominent miner Chandler Guo, describing the project as “simply trying to make a quick buck”.

Onto the rest of the market…

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.04 trillion and up about 1% since yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

Ethereum (ETH) is also showing some exuberance over the past 24 hours. Clearly can’t stand ETC grabbing the mic for its moment in the limelight.

The Merge process is actually beginning pretty much any moment now – September 6 – even though the completion date should be somewhere closer to the 15th.

Among other benefits, including yield staking and long-term scalability improvements, the merge to Proof-of-Stake will reportedly reduce Ethereum’s carbon emissions by 99 per cent.

As for Bitcoin, what’s happening? Not too much at the moment price-wise… It’s been about 10 very straight days of crabbing sideways just under and just fractionally above US$20k.

But that’s just fine if you’re enjoying accumulating at these levels, reckons Collective Shift’s Ben Simpson.

 

Uppers and downers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$8.4 billion to about US$430 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

DAILY PUMPERS

• Ethereum Classic (ETC), (market cap: US$5.67 billion) +25%

• DeFIChain (DFI), (mc: US$791 million) +16%

• Bitcoin Gold (BTG), (mc: US$458 million) +13

• Ravencoin (RVN), (mc: US$449 million) +13%

• Curve DAO (CRV), (mc: US$462 million) +8%

 

DAILY SLUMPERS: Helium out of gas

• NEXO (NEXO), (market cap: US$535 million) -8%

• Helium (HNT), (mc: US$508 million) -7%

• EVMOS (EVMOS), (mc: US$690 million) -5%

• LEO Token (LEO), (mc: US$4.7 billion) -4%

• Chain (XCN), (mc: US$1.62 million) -3%

 

Around the blocks

A selection of randomness and pertinence that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse…

We covered the potential ETH PoW chain split opportunity with David Angliss from Apollo Capital recently, but blockchain and crypto twitterer Bobby Ong also gives a pretty good breakdown about how best to prepare…

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