More discreet (at least in the media) than Bitcoin, Ethereum is nonetheless a great success and a heavyweight in the cryptocurrency sector, less than 10 years after its creation.
Bitcoin is king in the cryptocurrency sector, but it's not the only virtual currency that counts. More discreet, but just as dynamic, the market's second-largest crypto-currency remains unavoidable and an anchor of the market and, by observing the Ethereum price snapshot today, we can measure the progression of its value, which remains largely positive since the beginning of the year.
Still at $2,350 in January, the crypto-currency is currently close to $3,150, where it is coping with both positive and negative announcements affecting the crypto sector.
It is still a long way from its record value of almost $4900, but recent developments and announcements concerning its ecosystem give reason to hope that it will well exceed this value.
July 30 was a symbolic day for the Ethereum blockchain and its Ether currency, as it celebrated its nine-year anniversary. Co-created by Vitalik Buterin, it has a capitalization of $382.6 billion and its network has processed 2.45 billion transactions in over 20 million blocks during its existence.
Ethereum, a more efficient decentralized network
Following the general trends of the crypto market, but relatively resilient, Ethereum is a solid value in the crypto market and has demonstrated its ability to adapt. With The Merge evolution of 2022, the blockchain has moved from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake mechanism, which has drastically lowered processing capacity requirements and energy consumption, one of the general black spots of cryptocurrencies, and by extension the associated transaction fees.
Today, with climate issues and questions about the resource consumption of digital technologies, this transformation of blockchain operations towards greater frugality is highly impactful and opens up new perspectives. With The Merge, the energy consumption required to run the Ethereum blockchain has been reduced by 99.95%.
More energy-efficient, the Ethereum blockchain can also resolve more transactions per second than Bitcoin. Further improvements, such as sharding, should enable it to go even further, resolving transactions in parallel for even greater responsiveness.
With the rise in the value of the ETH in 2021 / 2022, a certain fever overcame the crypto sector, which rushed to buy gaming graphics cards to the point of creating shortages to supply more or less improvised cryptomining sites, alongside the large-scale mining farms with dedicated equipment.
The Nvidia group found itself obliged to install a mining system on some of its graphics cards to make them less attractive and re-establish the gaming market. The subsequent fall in the value of the ETH has enabled a return to a certain normality.
ETH, paying with virtual currency
Ethereum is also appreciated for its ability to enable the emergence of DApps, decentralized applications based on the blockchain, and can be used, like bitcoin, as a means of payment in ETH.
There are numerous exchange platforms on which to buy, sell or trade ETH, depending on price trends.
The advantage is that the user does not hand over the funds to a third party, but stores them in a secure digital wallet, thus becoming his or her own bank. The decentralized, P2P (peer-to-peer) mode of operation means that no intermediaries are needed, and exchanges take place directly between users.
Some physical services can also directly include the option of payment in ETH, with the aim of offering the virtual currency as an alternative method of payment. But ETH can also be a source of investment by betting on the evolution of its value. In this case, you'll need to keep a close eye on news and decisions that could impact the direction of the share price in one direction or another.
Like other crypto-currencies, Ethereum's strength lies in its decentralized, entity-independent operation (institutions, governments, etc.), its ability to withstand disruption, and its convenient, low-cost cross-border payment system.
Ethereum is intended to support DeFi, an alternative financial system that is open, global and not dependent on rules dictated by institutions, with financial services accessible at any time and to any user with an Internet connection.
The blockchain's open-source (in principle, anyone can contribute and propose improvements to the protocol) and decentralized characteristics allow for great freedom of use around a common framework. And as with bitcoin at the start of the year, the US market paved the way for ETH spot funds at the end of July, which are designed to stabilize the virtual currency over time and facilitate investment in the cryptocurrency without holding it directly.
As with all decentralized crypto-currencies, major swings in the ETH price are still possible, but they will now be less violent in principle... although the crypto world can still be full of surprises!
