While everyone in the Cryptocurrencies sphere was focusing on the crash in the price of bitcoin, due to core developer Mike Hearn quitting the community and branding it a failed experiment, another drama has started unfolding.
Ethereum’s cryptocurrency, Ether, has steadily advanced its position in the crypto trading markets. The price of Ether increased by almost 37% over the past week and jumped about 13% in the last twenty-four hours alone to just above 0.0037 BTC ($1.40), thus further strengthening its position as the fourth biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
Litecoin, probably the most widely known cryptocurrency after bitcoin, now has a market cap of just over $131 million after its price fell almost 16% in the last twenty-four hours to about 0.007889 BTC ($2.99). In contrast to the weakening LTC, Ether's market capitalization now reaches an impressive $107 million. Considering that Ether's market capitalization was just $39 million in August 2015, and only crossed $90 million last week, it can be expected to overtake Litecoin soon to become the third biggest crypto by market capitalization behind Bitcoin and Ripple if current trend continue.
Another milestone reached by Ether today is that for the first time ever its daily trading volume passed that of Litcoin reaching $1,905,030 compared with just $1,353,920 for LTC trading in the last twenty-four hours.
Sometimes called Bitcoin 2.0 or Bitcoin 3.0, Ethereum proponents see it as much more than just a cryptocurrency system as per the original idea of Satoshi Nakamoto . It is instead referred to as a “planetary scale computer” that can handle everything from secure communication and e-commerce, to digital governance, the internet of things and much more.
