Ethereum post hardfork - where will ether price go next?

That's not me by the way but my wife's homemade crochet-ed totoro sitting on its homemade blankie thingy, getting a suntan under the glorious southern hemiphere winter sun in my backyard.

So, I am in this private telegram group where a bunch of us look at ether and bitcoin prices and we try our darnest to make more money than what we will lose. It's a tight-knit group. Unsurprisingly, from time to time, people have their differing views on the market. Nevertheless, everyone remains friendly, cool and trolling is kept lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek. It's a great conducive community to be in and mutual support is strong there.

From time to time, we post our views in that chat group . I try to contribute my take mostly on the qualitative side - That's because my quantitative part sux big time (technical analysis has a b*tch learning curve, at least for me).

Here's my take on where ethereum is, in terms of a post-hardfork:

ETH/USD pricing has been firmer after the hardfork currently trading above USD 12.50 (blue line) amid a stable BTC/USD above USD 660

Q) Will there be 2 etherchains after hardfork? Will the old chain survive and disrupt the forked chain going forward?

R) I seriously doubt the old chain will last long. The difficulty on the unforked chain is currently at 0% (i.e there are NOT a lot of miners to compete with, in order to mine a successful block but the time to mine one is taking longer and longer, as evidence from the much lower amount of block numbers mined between the old and forked chain in the same time frame). As such this will impede the efficacy of confirming transactions performed on the old chain. At the same time, no credible exchange has bothered to offer old chain ethers for trading to date.

Q) Will ether price fall a whole lot with the 15% increased supply (12 million ethers) from unlocked DAO refunds underway?

R) The bigger investors of the DAO who wanted to exit would have already done so either before the hardfork event (by shorting ether to hedge) or at once right after the hard fork via the refund process. To date, more than half of ethers invested in the DAO has been refunded). These are sophisticated players - there should not be any inertia or steep learning curve for them to do so. The forking and refund process has been extremely smooth and orderly thus far. Give it a day or so - if there is no major correction seen in ether price, i think this means the market would have put the DAO and hardfork debacle behind it. The focus will then be on forward looking fundamentals to drive it on the long term basis. In the short term, the usual 'pump and dump' volatility that we are all too familiar with should re-emerge

Q) What will affect ether prices going forward then?

R) You have recent news on Coinbase offering direct wallet support for ether purchases and sales. Although not exactly a surprise, that news will continue to help demand and liquidity of ether. Hence it should help underpin ether pricing in the near term.

A risk to ether price could come from the "impending" post-halving bitcoin rally finally eventuating. If and when it does, due to the usual inverse price correlation, ether prices should be weaker as people shift funds and focus to trading bitcoin in that situation.

Lastly, a near term big opportunity to ether pricing would be the huge Chinese exchanges finally jumping on bandwagon to support ether trading. This potential opportunity has, in recent times, taken a backseat to other pressing news that has emerged in the past month or so. Infrastructure wise, we know some of these exchanges have been testing the inclusion of ether trading in their UI a couple of months back. They should mostly be completed by now. All it takes is an announcement and a switch-on - especially more so after bitcoin halving, the ether hardfork and the DAO debacle is more or less out of the concern area by now.

Perhaps I have missed out bigger elephants or if I could be uttering nonsense - do share your own views below. Happy to hear or see some comments for my 2nd post (my 1st was an epic failure with regards to sharing a bargain customized namestamp).

This is my workstation powered by a budget 8 core 16 thread xeon e5-2670 cpu costing less than 800 USD to build - it's a fantastic rig for trading and also rendering (i've been told). Perhaps that will be material for another share if there is enough interest out there to see where I sourced the parts and how I built it (I am not exactly a tech savvy person here. So if i can do it, so can you - with the right compass).

ok, that is really me - on a lame attempt at taking a picture of a small yellow weed flower with my handphone.

p/s : English is not my native language and i apologise in advance for any grammatical or spelling errors (also I am too tired now to keep checking and re-checking the content) . As long as my ideas are communicated through more or less, i am a happy camper.

Have a really awesome weekend ahead!

#crypto-news