Analysts discovered that Ethereum was slowly making progress in the background, with its Network Growth stealing the show in the altcoin ecosystem.
Apart from the Bitcoin halving scheduled to occur in May of this year, the other major event that everyone is looking forward to is the ‘altcoin surge’. Although the previous year was not great for Ethereum and its compatriots, new numbers showed that there may be some solid reasons for the hype.
Ethereum The Resilient Warrior
Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency on the charts has been a resilient warrior in the altcoin industry, fending off the advances made by XRP and Litecoin. As the last few weeks gave a much-needed price boost to Ethereum, it was still not considered good enough to trump the use cases retained by Bitcoin. It was at this point that analysts observed Ethereum’s Network Growth had risen for the first time since the middle of last year.
It does not make sense to compare the current performance with that of early 2018, but after what the industry went through it can be hailed as a sign of reprieve. The highest network growth that Ethereum registered in 2019 was around 170,000, a figure that was almost surpassed on January 8th. During the latest event, the network growth rose above the 150,000 marks to register a 6-month high. There is also a direct positive correlation between price and network growth. This has been one of the main reasons why Ethereum fans have focussed on developments to bolster the asset’s price.
The Ethereum community has responded positively to the growth with Terranova, an ETH user tweeting:
“The Internet is currently undergoing its Age of Exploration, with many new countries being discovered. Enter colonialism in the 2020s, and we’ll see state treasuries buying up pieces of the most valuable land on the Internet. We’ll see state treasuries buying $ETH.”
The increase in the network capacity has obviously yielded positive results for Eteheum’s price. At press time, ETH was trading for $135.94 with a total market cap of $14.847 billion. A 4 percent price hike over the week caused the 24-hour market volume to also increase to $7.631 million.
Conclusion
The general pattern during any bear market is that most major cryptocurrencies follow the price of Bitcoin. It would be interesting to see how Ethereum can overcome this by creating its own surges as well as mark up points. Ethereum’s short term technical analysis showed that the cryptocurrency would not reach great new heights unless Bitcoin broke its resistance at $8400. Holders now believe that the ETH price hike is a waiting game and that as we approach the Bitcoin halving, the story will get clearer.