Every so often when nobody is who should be paying attention is and right about when you think there's not a soul on earth cares so nobody is watching anyway, the opposite of your expectation is the unexpected result.
Once in a while we have to be reminded that statistics show patterns and history that can guide us but nothing is ever truly absolute. Everything we know is a derivative of improbable perfection theorized through approximated mathematics where not even absolutes can be true or false with a precision of certainty.
Chances that are slim to none are considered an absolute zero and worse case scenarios seem to be something you just say without any actual belief its actual occurrence could really happen. However, almost nothing is still something and odds of the most improbable truth still offer a chance.
Enter Ethereum Classic
Unexpected by some and hard to believe by others, Ethereum Classic (ETC) came out of nowhere and knocked it's newborn sibling (ETH) off of it's pedestal while most mainstream and industry media had already glorified ETH as the victor and pronounced it's predecessor officially dead. I didn't even realize this had become some sort of game.
If bitcoin and its blockchain has taught us anything, it's to expect the unexpected and never, ever, consider anything of its nature, dead. If there is still hash power, there is still a network and if there is still a network there is sill a digital asset that has some value to someone else it wouldn't exist at all..
Such was the case of Ethereum Classic. It was well known that some members of the community were in uproar over the hard fork claiming it essentially put everyone else at risk to enrich one organization. An argument that may actually hold water. What was not apparent was the depth of the unheard voices of those such as investors or normal users who had no vote or say so in the matter.
It is also important to note in all fairness that not doing the hard fork was not good either. The DAO was guaranteed to lose $60 million USD so as we stated back then there was no winning solution. They both sucked.
It just so happens that just about anything else other than the hard fork sucked less. The lesser of two evil, if you will. Regardless, during the fork the old fork had to remain active while the new fork had to move into "production" and the result were two completely separate and operating chains.
ETC Rises
There is little doubt that anyone aside from a few expect the magnitude of what happened next. Exhcnages, beginning with Poloniex, began offering ETC for trade and within 24 hours ETC had traded well over 100 million USD rising to $2 per coin, something that we has never been done before. There was a coin 42 which rose to $1300, but the volume was far too insignificant to count.
This not only dwarfed ETH in volume but continues to be the most popular traded digital asset at up to 5 times the volume of the 2nd placed ETH. At the time the above chart was obtained ETC was at 5 times the volume of ETH, while ETH also suffered in a price drop.
Bitcoin also suffered a price drop amid the outcome of a developer/miner meeting and a proposal of which we'll get into in another article. Just a side note.
The Hard Spark
For a split second there, It appeared as if ETC had some strong, but very small support, and ETH had the developers claiming victory and success. This appeared quiet for the most part but of course the tension was far from relieved.
Supporters of new ETH seemed set on antagonizing the new ETC support community and continnued slinging allot of negative feelings (to put it nicely) in the direction of a small but determined ETC support group. At the cataclysmic point of this entire event, a miner by the name of Chandler Guo stated publicly that he intended to 51% attack the network along with a group of other miners he was in the process of assembling. He warned that his notice should be taken seriously and all supporters of ETC should stop supporting ETC.
To say "the shit hit the fan" would be the understatement of 2016.
For the next 24 hours and ever since that day, ETC rose above ETH in volume and has consistently remained there. currently at around 0.00405 (about $2.45) per asset, its surpassed every single digital asset and virtual currency there is, including bitcoin on some days, in trading volume for the past week and is currently the 5th most valuable asset. Not too bad for a week, but hard to fathom however since it actually got there in a single day.
Asset
|
Price
|
Volume
|
Change
|
Name
|
|
BTC
|
▼
|
$611.31
|
922846.08
|
($2.32)
|
Bitcoin
|
ETH
|
▼
|
$ 10.99
|
174898.674
|
($6.90)
|
New
Ethereum
|
DASH
|
▲
|
$ 10.19
|
7931.868
|
$1.52
|
Dash
|
LTC
|
▼
|
$ 3.84
|
4020.196
|
($2.18)
|
Litecoin
|
ETC
|
▲
|
$ 2.40
|
346770.334
|
$33.49
|
Ethereum
Classic
|
XMR
|
▼
|
$ 1.72
|
2774.039
|
($5.52)
|
Monero
|
NXT
|
▲
|
$ 0.03
|
11529.176
|
$8.09
|
NXT
|
XRP
|
▼
|
$ 0.01
|
992.097
|
($0.83)
|
Ripple
|
STR
|
▼
|
$ 0.00
|
205.637
|
($2.57)
|
Stellar
|
NOTE: In the few hours it took to write this article, ETC has risen to around 0.0045 XBT, or $2.70 with a volume of 67,000 XBT ($40.2 million USD).
You Can Only Make Your Choice
The chance of this type of support being thrown at the ETC network is certainly not something anyone could have predicted. Since the inception of bitcoin, thousands have tried to accomplish what nobody has yet to date. Usually because the idea was lame but mostly because the concept of bitcoin has little to do with money or even technology at all.
It has to do with trust and its provision by adopting its existence. There are no people involved in blockchain trust. Miners only provide power to electronics that run software that execute code written by others to facilitate this trust and users merely make that possible by investing and/or using its evolving purposes which in turn fund the ability for it to exist.
That means many different things to many different people from privacy to security to new abilities to disruption of old ideas. It turns greed into security and protection from the greedy and records everything as a truth more absolute than any other to have ever existed in known history.
However the one thing shared among everyone who participates in its existence is choice. We choose for it to exist and no government, group, corporation, or other interest can change that that once the choice has been made by enough people.
Ethereum was in a position where that power of choice was not fully solidified and a body of people made a decision to create a new network of which they even stated before they executed its creation, might result in another fully self-supporting and operating chain where ETH (now ETC) would continue to exist at "some possible value". Right up to this point is was a bad idea, but a plausible one and had it been left at that, the events of the last 15 days may have been less dramatic.
However, they then (and I say they collectively as all that did) made the decision to try and destroy another network that they themselves created and going against the choice made by others by trying to tell them they cannot exist, that their choice is unimportant, and that they have no right to choose. This goes against everything blockchain stands for and had bitcoin followed this path of existence, it likely would have been dead the first time it was declared as such.
I'll note how safe everyone was told Ethereum was right up until the point new Ethereum existed. Then all of a sudden the ETH supporters changed message and delivered a new one stating how unsafe the ETC network was even though just a week before is was a completely safe network. Odd since nothing there had changed at all.
To make matters really go from bad to worse, this was all done for terribly the wrong reason. I don't think anyone exists other than the one who obtained the 60 million in Ether was not sympathetic to what happened, but sympathy does not equate to the allowance of a dictatorship or any right to put others in harms way. It's hard to buy the "replay attack bug" when the disclosure of the issue itself was coupled with how to code around it.
That's just not how this stuff works. You can choose not to participate, but you cannot choose what will or will not be if others choose differently. The decisions to attempt ending the ETC network only helped the exact opposite happen. As stated before in an article just a short time ago:
"actions like this generally elicit an opposite and equal reaction in subsequent response."
Like everyone else, I watch the troll-box, I hang out in various forums, roam around Reddit, and see the bickering and foolish statements made by both sides. Not all parties on either side participated (openly anyway) in the mudslinging or threats but as a bystander watching from the outside in, I can tell you it appeared pretty clear who was antagonizing who before it became blatantly obvious. Regardless, none of that is really relevant now.
The rise of ETC, where the price is spotted, which symbol is consider the "winner" today, or how much volume is traded is really not what is important here, what is important is the reason why it exists at all.
Regardless of intent or reason of those who chose for it to exist simply made that decision. This is the reason bitcoin became what it is and why it matters, this why blockchain is important, and this is exactly why ETC matters.
... and yes, you can use the ETC matters image for anything you wish to. See another poster version below.
Report by dinbits
Image source: dinbits staff
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