The world of digital currencies is in a state of change, with the price of bitcoin jumping by more than $1,000 in the previous few days. But it hasn't prevented some traders from generating enormous gains on their stocks.
On Wednesday, The (ETH) price soared to $724 per unit, up from roughly $300 only a week earlier. The ETH/USD pair has surged by more than 20% in the previous few days and is presently trading at the highest rate since mid-December 2017.
The increase comes as investors are hunting for safe haven assets following a turbulent time on the crypto markets. Bitcoin briefly went below $6,000 this week before returning to its current level of $6,730 — still down from its all-time high of $20,000 in December 2017.
While Ethereum is not nearly as popular as Bitcoin or Ripple (XRP), it still has more long-term investors than any other cryptocurrencies on CoinMarketCap's list of top 100 crypto by market cap at over 2 million copies worth over $3 billion as of press time on a Wednesday morning.
In other words, Blockchain is the location where people are placing their money – and deservedly so.
Ethereum's value has surged over the previous year, earning more over $600 in value just January. The cryptocurrency's inflation rate is currently at 1 percent, which implies that each new block issued on Ethereum will create 10 new ethers (ETH) or 0.1 ETH. This is a long cry from Bitcoin's 50 BTC reward every block, which implies that there are only 21 million bitcoins in existence today.
There are presently roughly 100 million ETH in trade according to CoinMarketCap statistics. Of those 100 million coins, around 70 percent have been mined previously. That leaves 30 percent that can be mined over the next three years until Ethereum transitions from Proof of Work (PoW) mining to Proof of Stake (PoS), which will make mining easier to power and less expensive for miners.
The other 30 percent of all ethers will be dispersed to all holders who had them before July 2029 when PoS enters full implementation