A lesser known cryptocurrency by the name of Aeternity (AE) is up more than 70% over the last week, defying a broad downtrend that has shaved tens of billions of dollars from the market. The Bulgarian-based platform operates as a scalable smart contract for the IOT economy, which has been described as a $19 trillion opportunity.
AE Price Levels
Aeternity coin rose more than 29% on Wednesday, reaching $3.14 U.S., according to CoinMarketCap. With the gain, AE has now added more than 70% over the past seven days for a market cap of $731 million. That puts it 41st among active cryptocurrencies in terms of market cap.
Over the same period, the broader cryptocurrency market has shed more than 6% of its market cap. That’s equivalent to roughly $34 billion.
At $4.3 million, AE’s daily trade volumes are only a fraction of the altcoin leaders. That being said, volumes topped $6 million on Tuesday as momentum continued to build.
Most of the trades for AE coin are handled by Gate.io, which on Tuesday processed nearly three-quarters of the transactions. Liqui, AEX, HitBTC and EtherDelta also support the trading of AE.
The coin’s rapid increase has been somewhat of a surprise given ongoing trepidation in the market over regulations and cybersecurity.
An Introduction to Aeternity
The Aeternity project is marketed as a scalable blockchain solution for high bandwidth transactions. Basically, this refers to any data intensive process within the realm of fin-tech, banking, gaming and IOT. On a practical level, Aeternity can support applications related to payments, video games and the prediction markets.
Aeternity completed its crowdsale in June, where it raised more than $24 million. The initial token distribution was rolled out over the Ethereum network. The platform is undergoing a security audit as we speak, which will be followed by the launch of the mainnet in the second quarter.
Although there was no apparent catalyst for the recent rally in AE, investors appear more keen on backing projects with smart contract capability. According to some of the project’s backers, Aeternity has the potential to challenge Ethereum due to its technical specifications (state channels, decentralized oracles and hybrid POW/POS algorithm) and growing emphasis on IOT applications. Only time will tell whether it has the backing to challenge the top smart contract cryptocurrencies. In the meantime, it is generating significant momentum in a market struggling for direction.
Disclaimer: The author owns bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. He holds investment positions in the coins, but does not engage in short-term or day-trading.