Some people call ETC a sleeping giant. My friends in Japan call it the 'Real Ethereum'. I'm more interested in my investment in ETC so I'll get down to the nitty gritty of it. Here's why I think Ethereum Classic could reach $180+ by the end of 2018:
Fundamental Analysis:
Most investors in cryptocurrencies do not know that Ethereum Classic was the original Ethereum. Vitalik Buterin & Co. decided to refund millions of stolen funds in a DAO hack by changing the code which was against the principles and spirit of the project, hence resulting in a split with two coins ETH and ETC. The rich coin ETH received a lot of publicity and media attention over the years whereas the coin of morals and principle, ETC remained in the shadows. Developers were heartbroken and they dropped the project for a while until some of them picked it up again out of principle and morals and started working on it. However, they continued working on the radar and focused on the project rather than media hype.
Renowned Bitcoin Developer, Jameson Lopp ranks Ethereum Classic 6th in terms of work done and progress made on the project during 2017. It is worthwhile to note that Ethereum was 7th and Ripple was 12th on this list.
2017 reference impl commits & merges:
Bitcoin Core: 1,925
Litecoin: 1,298
IOTA: 1,166
Monero: 1,199
Bitcoin ABC: 1,104
Ethereum Classic: 895
Ethereum (geth): 833
Zcash: 491
Stellar: 453
Dash: 394
Bitcoin Classic: 374
Ripple: 271
Bitcoin Unlimited: 218
Bitconnect: 23
Dogecoin: 0
Source:
This is ample proof that the Ethereum Classic Team is working full throttle on its project. They are also starting to get a lot more active on social media. They also recently tweeted that they are willing to extend help to Coinbase to enable them to list ETC on their platform. They soon deleted that tweet but I'm sure Coinbase got the message and it's only a matter of time until we hear news of it being listed. In addition to that, DMM Japan is listing ETC on its exchange on January 11th, 2018.
Technical Analysis:
Looking at the ETCBTC chart, we can see that a breakout is at the door and the price can shoot up any time to catch up with Bitcoin and the rest of the altcoins, to say the least. ETC has been sleeping for far too long but this time the technical indicators point to a long overdue breakout. We can expect ETC to hit near term targets in $80s, $120 and then climb past $200.
Why I think ETC Can Hit $180+ by the end of 2018?
I have no met a single developer who can claim that Ethereum is superior to Ethereum Classic in terms of technology. On the contrary, I have met developers who claim that Ethereum Classic has a better team than Ethereum has. If you do your research, you will find that is true. The team behind Ethereum Classic comprises of a competent group of specialists from IOHK (https://iohk.io/projects/ethereum-classic/) as well as the ETC Dev Team. IOHK is the same company that is also behind Cardano (https://iohk.io/projects/cardano/). So, if technology wise ETC is not inferior to ETH if not superior, then how is it justified that ETC has a market cap of $4 Billion whereas ETH has a market cap of $107 Billion which makes ETH appox. 27 times bigger than ETC in terms of marketcap?!!
Bitcoin has a marketcap of $286 Billion. Its new competitor Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has a market cap of $50 Billion. That difference makes BTC approx. 6 times bigger than BCH compared to ETH and its competitor ETC having a difference of 27 times! So, let's consider ETC catches up and becomes 6 times smaller than ETH. By that calculation, ETC will have a market cap of $18 billion and a price of $180+ even if the market cap of ETH remains constant(which we all know won't). As an investor, my interest is in the money and all things considered, I firmly believe that ETC is probably the best investment in the crypto market right now in terms of risk/reward and growth potential.