The hidden boom of Bitcoin's rival Ethereum

cryptocurrency
The Bitcoin rally has calmed down, as the competitor once again gets more and more into focus: The boom at number two Ethereum is just as fantastic - and has even better reasons than the bitcoin hype.

The bitcoin-rush of the past few weeks has overshadowed the rise of the number two in the market - wrongly. Ethereum, the crypt diet, based in Zug, is also showing a breathtaking growth. Since the beginning of the year the course of Ether (ETH) has increased by a fabulous 3900 percent - from 8 to currently 320 dollars. Parallel to the Bitcoin rally in early August, Ether has grown similarly strongly. While the hyped Bitcoin won 54 percent, the Ether price rose 44 percent.

So Ethereum continues to attack the dominance of Bitcoin. Since its inception, Ethereum has been regarded as the strongest Bitcoin competitor. This also has to do with the development: At 19, Vitalik Buterin was already one of the leading figures in the bitcoin scene. However, he came to the conclusion that the functions of digital currencies have to be expanded technically. When he was flashing with Bitcoin developers, he designed Ethereum - a crypt diet with an integrated platform that can blockch all kinds of value and transfer.

Ethereum as a favorable alternative to bitcoin

If Ethereum is currently attracting great interest, then on the one hand because ether is an alternative to Bitcoin. "Bitcoin is now too expensive to buy, and they prefer the tenfold cheaper currency, which is the number two in the market," says André Brunner, a partner at Capco.

In this respect, Ether is similar to Bitcoin, a speculative object whose price gain always promises a rich return. Earlier, Ether is still a bit distant from the record in March, but experts expect the crypt diet to easily surpass the $ 410 and set new records. "Ether will also crack the 1000-dollar mark, clearly," says market analyst Brunner. "There's some announcement that goes a little bit more and the course goes to 500 dollars."

Rejection of the Winklevoss fund

Already, Ethereum has reached a market capitalization of $ 30 billion. That is almost half as much as the market leader Bitcoin, which currently touches the 70 billion dollars. This is a significant change - currently Bitcoin's share of the market capital of all cryptos is around 46 percent. Against the rejection of an index-based crypto-fund by the US supervisory authority SEC in March, which the twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss had announced, the proportion was still 90 per cent, as market analysis Timo Emden of «Daily FX Germany» observed. He assumes that "the dominance of the digital coin will close". Especially for Ethereum the rejection of the fund meant the starting shot for the climbing part of the course.

Even if this does not mean that the calming of Bitcoin continues - many market observers consider a value of 5000 dollars by the end of the year as well possible - speak also other reasons for the upward trend of Ethereum. The goal of developer Vitalik Buterin was to make Ethereum technically more accessible and more flexible than Bitcoin.
For Ethereum, which is benefiting from the increasing number of ICOs, for example, the crowd-based exchanges via crypto- nutrition are a good example. Many investors who want to invest money into an enterprise at an ICO demand the possibility of doing this in Ether, says André Brunner. That is why many companies that are looking for lenders through cryptography offer this possibility.

Thanks to its blockchain platform, Ethereum also receives a lot of support from renowned large corporations. "Through the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, ETH is getting more and more support from financial and tech companies like JPMorgan Chase, Intel and Toyota," says Brunner.

Ethereum has outperformed Bitcoin in the number of transactions

The greater technical flexibility also pays off in transactions. That their number is limited and already too slow for many requirements is one of the biggest criticisms at Bitcoin. Ethereum has already crossed bitcoin several times in the number of daily transactions, a week ago the number two for the first time more transactions in one day, than the Bitcoin ever within 24 hours. This is shown in the " bitinfocharts " analysis page .

However, the technical flexibility also carries risks. Ethereum had to go through a "Hard Fork" four times, like the Bitcoin on 1 August - a hard split of the blockchain, which is then spread in two different chains. In addition, Ethereum is always victims of hackers - only on Monday, hackers hacked an amount of 450,000 US dollars by cracking an investment platform .