Ethereum has just entered free fall. The second most popular cryptocurrency plunged nearly 20 percent at the time of writing to trade at $5.88 to the ETH, compared with its position 24 hours earlier on the Poloniex exchange.
Ethereum has been constantly falling and as the chart below shows, the cryptocurrency has fallen from its previous level of $12 at the end of October 2016 to nearly half of that as of Dec. 6, 2016.
- Eth on Poloniex
Why is Ethereum floundering?
Ethereum has been plagued by disaster ever since it came into being. The cryptocurrency has undergone at least four hardforks, which have left investors impatient and exhausted. Readers would recall the infamous Dao incident, which was being hailed by many as the first application built on the smart contracts functionality that Ethereum offered.
The proverbial last straw seems to be November’s accidental hardfork, which resulted in Ethereum’s two main clients, Parity and Geth, losing consensus. Meanwhile, Ethereum Classic, a currency based on a former Ethereum Blockchain, which is a result of one of the hardforks, has been a gainer in today’s ETH bloodbath on the exchanges. The classic variant was up by 0.14 percent in 24 hours and trading at 0.7610000 levels.
As to why the currency is failing to keep its head up, it would appear that investors are wary of what’s going on with Ethereum and seem to be giving up. As Reddit poster theswapman put it:
“Unnecessary hardfork splitting chain, multiple bugs, no apps except the notoriously failed DAO and notoriously delayed REP. The fundamentals are absolutely not stronger than ever.”
Is Ethereum a Spurious Dragon?
While Ethereum was and may still be labeled as a promising technology, it has failed to deliver in terms of either a solid application or in terms of appreciation for the people that have put faith in it.
We have covered in detail the contrast between the road that the Bitcoin community has taken in contrast with the path which Ethereum has been headed down. Whether or not Ethereum will prove true to its promise is anyone’s guess at the moment but it can be safely said at this moment that Ethereum has turned out to be a Spurious Dragon without much fire.