Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, could be at a crossroads, with its price potentially set to rise or fall significantly in the coming weeks. As of Monday, Ethereum had a market cap of $196.03 billion and was priced at $1,657.90.
If the market remains bullish, Ethereum could see its price continue to rise above $1,600. However, if the market takes a downturn, Ethereum's price could crash below the $1,300 mark in the coming weeks. A severe crash could even see the Ethereum price drop to $1,000 again, particularly if there's an insolvency event at the Digital Currency Group (DCG).
These forecasts for Ethereum are based on potential scenarios that could occur in the next few weeks. An investment in Ethereum should probably be made from a long-term perspective at this time due to these uncertainties.
The Ethereum blockchain has undergone significant changes since it was first introduced by Russian programmer Vitalk Buterin in 2014. Notably, in September 2022, Buterin released Ethereum 2.0, an update designed to increase transaction speed and security on the network. The update allows Ethereum to handle more than a million transactions per second.
Ethereum 2.0 was introduced in four main phases: Phase 0 introduced the beacon chain; Phase 1 introduced shard chains to validate transactions; Phase 1.5 saw the current ETH mainnet become a shard; and the final phase marked a full transition to Proof Of Stake.
Despite these updates and its high popularity, Ethereum has faced challenges such as high transaction costs due to increased volume. At one point, Ethereum's transaction capacity was between 25 to 30 per second, leading to higher transaction fees.
Ethereum is known as an ecosystem where coins called Ether are given free to miners. It is used to build a variety of decentralized applications, making it one of the most popular networks of its kind.
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