Ethereum has seen its price rise by 12% in the last seven days.
What is Ethereum?
Ethereum is a community-run blockchain system that can execute smart contracts and host decentralised applications (Dapps). The ETH cryptocurrency fuels and secures the network and can be used in applications and to pay gas fees.
The Ethereum network holds almost $64 billion worth of value locked into decentralised finance (DeFi). ETH has seen a trading volume of $40 billion in the last 24 hours as traders increase buying pressure.
To put this into perspective, ETH’s price has risen by 10.7% over the past 30 days.
Ethereum’s whitepaper was written in 2013 by Vitalik Buterin and its other co-founders have gone on to found other successful projects. Gavin Wood created Polkadot, Charles Hoskinson is the founder of Cardano and Joseph Lubin went on to found ConsenSys.
Where can I buy Ethereum?
How is Ethereum different from Bitcoin?
After Bitcoin, Ethereum is the second largest coin by market cap and one of the most common cryptocurrencies in investment portfolios. However, unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum has smart contract functionality, meaning it can host Dapps.
Tesla & Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/YSswJmVZhP
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2021
Many people have raised concerns about the environmental impact of Bitcoin’s energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus mechanism. Although Ethereum currently also runs on proof-of-work, it is in the process of upgrading to Ethereum 2.0, which will mean transitioning to proof-of-stake and a 99.95% reduction in energy usage.
Anticipation around this update and the incredible growth of Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem have many believing ETH will outpace BTC this bull cycle.