On March 28 we wrote about Ethereum and it’s rise over 1,000 %. The cryptocurrency took a hit this week and plunged over 50%.
CoinDesk reported:
Ether’s descent
While bitcoin has seen range-bound prices, ether plunged more than 56% during the week ending 15th April at 12:00 UTC, according to Poloniex figures.
George Samman, blockchain advisor and consultant, described the development as one that had been foreshadowed by changes in market fundamentals.
“Ether has fallen back to earth for sure,” Samman told CoinDesk. “Its technicals were deteriorating for a while and finally price fell with them.”
Christopher Burniske, analyst and blockchain products lead at investment management firm ARK Invest, spoke to the currency’s selloff, noting that exchange data signaled a shift was forthcoming as well.
“The sell order book on [digital currency exchange] Poloniex has consistently been 30-50% deeper than the buy order book,” he told CoinDesk.
But while ether has been suffering sharp price volatility, it has also been experiencing robust transaction activity.
The currency’s daily trades neared 35,000 on 14th April and remained above 30,000 during the several days prior. Since mid-March, these daily transactions have almost always stayed above 30,000.
In comparison, the digital currency did not consistently exceed 10,000 trades per day before December 2015.
Read the full story on CoinDesk
“changes in market fundamentals” lol. Nothing changed and there are no fundamentals for something like this. Etherium is not a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, it is a token used to fuel transactions. At this time nobody actually accepts Etherium for purchases and it probably never will be since that is not what it designed for. As far as decentralized smart contracts (which is what Etherium fuels) have no commercial market of any sort yet. You have a few companies doing proof-of-concept work but most places who use it don’t even have a business plan yet. No matter how you look at it there are no fundamentals for Etherium yet other than pure high risk speculation on something very far in the future.
Thanks for explanation
No, not that far in the future. Microsoft has already partnered with a variety of companies using the Ethereum platform to build distributed applications (“dApps”), and the scripting language used for coding smart contracts (Solidity) has been integrated into the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE. Ethereum dramatically expands the capabilities of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is useful for transactions of goods/services/other currencies, but Ethereum technology (and others derived from it) has so many additional possibilities. However, it is not a one-or-the-other situation – the two technologies will co-exist to provide very different functions. I do believe Ethereum will fundamentally disrupt a wide variety of industries in much the same way that Bitcoin is doing so for financial transactions. And much sooner than you think!
In fact there are currently no commercial services of any sort right now. The fact that some companies are doing proof of concept work is interesting but they are a long way from providing any real value. Decentralization certainly will disrupt some business structures but, on the other hand, there are many Bitcoin cultists who oversell what it can do. They go around saying Bitcoin is “better, faster, cheaper” and on and on. In fact things like Bitcoin and Etherium trade off speed and cost for decentralization. As a result you really need a business case to use these things. The people making all these claims are quickly becoming disenchanted when it doesn’t work out. The only time a smart contract works is when the underlying system is decentralized like the transfer of Bitcoin. People talk about using it for property deeds and so forth but those systems are controlled by clerks, court, etc. It does not matter what is says in some blockchain somewhere.
It is too bad many Bitcoin advocates oversell things like Bitcoin. People are not stupid and once they use Bitcoin a couple times they can see it doesn’t live up the hype. On a regular basis, I am accused of being paid by either the US government of JP Morgan whenever I point out some situation where Bitcoin is not ideal. In fact there are large of people who claim Bitcoin will end wars! They say the entire world will be using Bitcoin as their only currency. once that happens governments won’t be able to print money and so they won’t be able to fund wars! See, using Bitcoin = No more wars. lol. The guy they call “Bitcoin Jesus” fervently believes this and even offer to make some sort of public with me over that issue. I ran into a few interesting characters in domains but it is nothing compared to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is full of cultists who act just like religious fundamentalists and their entire lives is going from one conspiracy theory to another.