Ethereum enthusiasts will not be pleased with the way things are going right now. The Ether price continues to decline at an alarming rate and it doesn’t appear things will improve soon. The entire cryptocurrency industry is going through a very bearish phase right now. Bitcoin’s price decline is not helping matters by any means. Even though Korean exchanges remain quite bullish on Ether, it is unclear what the future holds.
Ether Value Continues to Take a big Beating
Although some people may argue different cryptocurrencies are not linked to one another in terms of value, the reality is very different. This is especially true where popular cryptocurrencies are concerned. Every time Bitcoin goes through a price drop, all other currencies will follow the same pattern. A few exceptions are always to be noted, albeit they are mainly pump-and-dump schemes of coins with no future whatsoever. BitcoinPlus is a good example to illustrate this trend.
As far as Ethereum is concerned, things are not looking all that great right now. The market cap is declining and is heading to below US$23bn if this trend keeps up. That is rather remarkable, considering the overall trading volume is still quite strong. Ethereum is outperforming virtually any other cryptocurrency based on trading volume, other than Bitcoin itself. Then again, trading volume includes both buy and sell orders, and it appears the sell orders are dominating the market as we speak.
Korean exchanges are still showing bullish Ethereum momentum, though. Bithumb puts the Ether price at US$274.27, whereas Western exchanges have it at US$230 to US$235. Then again, Bithumb’s API has not submitted any trading information for over two hours, according to Coinmarketcap. It is still possible to access the website, and traders are taking place as we speak. Despite this “API outage’, the platform still generated the vast majority of trading volume for Ethereum.
One thing to take into account is how the recent Ethereum network congestion issues paint a worrisome future for this technology. if Ethereum can’t scale because of an increased number of transactions, it seems impossible to support all of the Dapps and other projects building on top of this ecosystem right now. Not being able to handle transactions is quite problematic, as it creates major network congestion. If this blockchain can’t scale properly, none of the Dapps will function properly in the future either. That would be incredibly bad for Ethereum as a whole.
Additionally, there is also the unconfirmed rumor of some recent cryptocurrency ICOs trying to liquidate a portion of ETH holdings. The Status team has hinted at undertaking such an action in the near future. It is unclear how much the team would sell exactly, albeit they will do so in an OTC manner. This creates a feeling of uncertainty among Ethereum community members, as no one is sure what the future will hold. It is not against the ICO ToS to sell a portion of ETH holdings if needed, nor is it unethical to do so.
It is evident this bullish trend is causing a lot of negative pressure for all cryptocurrencies. Ethereum is incapable of escaping this downward trend, although it seems to hold its own around the 0.1 BTC mark for now. Then again, things can change rather quickly in the world of cryptocurrency. With so much uncertainty in the markets right now, further declines are to be expected. The only question is who will suffer the biggest losses in the next few days.