Home > Money > Banking & finance > What Bitcoin? Ethereum is THE big time crypto player today What Bitcoin? Ethereum is THE big time crypto player today January 3, 2019 4:42 pm
Max Keiser, Wall Street vet and host of Keiser Report, says he believes Bitcoin (BTC) will emerge as the world’s new reserve currency, according to the DailyHodl.
He says Bitcoin’s price, hash rate, and difficulty adjustment give it a significantly stronger monetary policy than any central bank.
Data from statistics resources Blockchain and Bitcoin Wisdom confirms that the Bitcoin network’s most recent difficulty adjustment (ease with which miners can solve equations to validate a block of transactions in the Bitcoin blockchain) was up, not down, by just over 10%, reversing earlier trends.
“That emission schedule of coins coming on every 10 minutes makes BTC the central bank of the world with the most rock-solid monetary policy there is,” he says.
But wait, it’s ethereum, which took back second place in the crypto market cap category, the one driving the cryptos forward, including BTC which is inching towards the $4000 mark.
Ethereum enables developers to build smart contracts, that automatically execute tasks when certain stated conditions are met.
Why is Ethereum hot after a horrendous 2018 when its crypto, Ether (ETH), dropped from a January trading at over $1,300 to single digits late December 2018.
A new open source, community-powered Ethereum research, and resources hub just launched.
EthHub is designed to give novices and developers a solid foundation for understanding and building on the platform and has been reviewed by AMEinfo.
Fun read: Bears, bulls, predictions and everything in between for cryptos 2019
Ether (ETH) rising rapidly
After being labeled a speculative bubble, and suffering from blockchain’s scalability issues and ICO, the collapse of ETH currently at $149 was inevitable and many believed it would eventually go to zero.
But, lo and behold, the currency regained its second place slot with a massive 80+% increase over the last 30 days, from $83 to $150, according to the Bitcoinist.
Coinswitch said that Ethereum is performing better than Bitcoin as stated by ConsenSys, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, smart contracts and ICOs.
According to OnChainFX, Ethereum prices have increased by 10,298% since last year this time. Ethereum rose by 66% over a week’s time, has surged up by 3.
30 % in the last 24 hours, and around 30% in the last 7 days.
Ethereum is expected to experience a Constantinople hard fork in January 2019, wherein the block times would start to increase, and by May 2019 the difficulty bomb is expected to reach 30-second block times.
Difficulty levels on Ethereum’s blockchain began increasing in November 2016, from block 200,000 onwards and started pushing block resolution time upwards.
Block time, the time it takes to mine a block is 10 minutes for BTC, and between 10 to 20 seconds for ETH.
Joseph Lubin, the co-creator of Ethereum and the founder of ConsenSys tweeted that price going low is not a big deal, pointing at the rising Ethereum adoption rate.
Ethereum has been gathering a lot of interest amongst the cryptizens which have lead ETH market capitalization to reach $10.5 Billion with 103,362,913 ETH as its current circulating supply, according to Coinswitch.
Market predictions for Ethereum- by Coinswitch
#1 Joseph Raczynski
The founder of Joe Technologist.com Joseph Raczynski predicts Ethereum might reach $1200 by the end of 2019, stating that the ETH network has the largest developer community.
#2 Ian McLeod
Ian McLeod, an influential technology expert of Thomas Crown Art puts teh price of ETH at more than $500 by 2019 as it might experience a global and monumental breakout.
#3 Nigel Green
Nigel Green, CEO of The deVere group, one of the leading International Financial consulting firms, predicted that ETH would reach more than $2500 by 2019 stating increased use of smart contracts and the decentralization of cloud computing.
#4 Trading Beasts
According to the website, Trading Beasts, the price of Ether might reach $908 by the end of 2019.
#5 Brian Schuster
The founder of Ark Capital LLC, Brian Schuster, believes that Ethereum may reach $100,000 in another 5 years or so, and will eventually replace gold with crypto.
Graph showing Ethereum price prediction 2020- by Coinswitch
Read: Ethereum is down but surely not out: It’s just too smart
Ethereum Hard Fork: Nothing to worry about
According to Ethereum World News (EWM), popular cryptocurrency exchange Binance confirms support for the January Ethereum (ETH) Constantinople Hard Fork.
The highly anticipated Ethereum (ETH) Constantinople hard fork has been scheduled for the 16th of January on the target block height of 7,080,000 with the Estimated Time happening between January 14 and 18, 2019.
However, due to the certainty of the hard fork that will involve significant enhancement to the network, there has been a renewed interest in ETH that has resulted in the digital asset reclaiming the number 2 spot just a day ago, according to EWM. .
