Ethereum price is close to reaching $50 and it already has jumped 14 percent over the past 24 hours. The majority of analysts believe that the recent surge in Ethereum price is the result of Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and investments being made by institutional investors.
Unusual trading patterns of Ethereum
There are many moving parts that have to be considered and analyzed before justifying the growth or the price trend of a digital currency or asset. The development of Ethereum price hasn’t been organic and analysts including ARK Invest's crypto-focused product lead Chris Burniske emphasized the unusual trading patterns of Ethereum.
On March 16, Ethereum reached a daily volume of $450 mln overnight, a volume that is twice larger than the previous maximum trading volume of $190 mln. In fact, the average daily trading volume of Ethereum was consistent at around $20 mln since August of 2016. Overnight, abruptly, the daily trading volume of Ethereum skyrocketed from $20 mln to $450 mln.
Ethereum is based on a non-fixed monetary supply and thus, rarity and scarcity aren’t possible factors that can influence Bitcoin price. Ethereum also doesn’t have a massive active user base like Bitcoin. The Bitcoin network’s user base utilize the currency as a payment network, settlement network, digital cash and gold. Also, because of its scarcity, the value of Bitcoin continues to increase.
However, with Ethereum, the daily trading volume and price should only increase if Ethereum applications are being used by an active user base and therefore using ETH. Ethereum itself is not a payment network nor a digital currency because it is actually an inflationary asset. Ethereum Classic recently switched to a fixed supply policy, which makes it easier for it to be justified as a currency.
The fact that Ethereum’s daily trading volume jumped 22.5 times overnight should be a warning to investors that Ethereum price is currently being inflated. It could be the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance that is leading institutional investors and major establishments to purchase ETH. This is highly likely as the daily trading volume of Ethereum is equally divided between the BTC-ETH pair and fiat-ETH pair.
Burniske also suggested that the increasing interest toward Ethereum on Google Trends could have led to a massive short-term spike in Ethereum price.
Previously, Cointelegraph reported that Ethereum reached its all-time high market cap due to intelligent and efficient partnerships. Looking at the price trend of Ethereum and its abrupt increase trading volume, it is evident that the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance sparked some type of interest amongst high profile traders and companies.
Another interesting discussion which has emerged within the Ethereum community is that an MLM Ponzi scheme is ongoing in Asia that is based on Ethereum. Chinese Bitcoin exchange Yunbi warned investors against MLM schemes and officially began to investigate into such cases.