Ethereum defends the USD 1,600 mark: can the price of ETH continue to rise?

Last week ended in the red for many well-known cryptocurrencies. In addition to the big names, many altcoins and meme tokens also suffered price drops. This briefly ended the latest rally at the start of the year. We have looked at the current market trends of the new week.

Ethereum trading volume increased by 25%

At the beginning of the week there was another slight rise, which was offset again today by smaller losses. Bitcoin is currently trading just below the $22,900 level again and is up 0.40% in the last 24 hours. Ethereum is currently at $1,630, down almost 1% over the same period. However, the volume of trade is currently increasing again. Almost 8.5 billion ETH coins were traded in the last 24 hours. That’s a good quarter more than the day before.

In the current CoinMarketCap ranking, ETH is still second behind Bitcoin, with a market cap of around $200 billion. The developments show better prospects for 2023, in which Ethereum has already increased by 35% compared to December 2022.

It remains to be seen whether these data will be enough to trigger a small rally again this week. Other currencies like Solana and Shiba Inu are still in the red and currently stand at $24.50 and $0.000012.

ETH hackers create uncertainty

Although ETH has gained significantly in recent weeks, there is always bad news. For example, an Ethereum launch linked to the abuse of the Raydium crypto platform laundered $2.7 million in ether through the sanctioned platform Tornado Cash on January 19, according to blockchain security firm CertiK. The Block reports.

The decentralized exchange Raydium was hacked in December. The attackers managed to steal various assets worth about $4.4 million. About 1,774 ETH or $2.7 million of the stolen funds have now been transferred to Ethereum via Tornado Cash. Tornado Cash is a cryptocurrency mixer that makes it extremely difficult for authorities to track transactions. The platform was banned from users last year on suspicion of money laundering and hackers continue to abuse digital financial protocols.

The attack highlights the ongoing security vulnerabilities in the crypto industry’s protocols. This highlights the importance of strong measures to protect against crypto fraud, especially in the DeFi arena. The emergence of renewed hacker attacks certainly has investors very cautious and could lead to price corrections to the downside. This also affects Ethereum as the largest DeFi network. More scandals and scams could further weaken trust in Ethereum. More control seems inevitable in the future. ETH investors will have to get used to this slowly.

Where is the ETH price going?

Ethereum is still one of the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, but the token has also proven to be volatile, especially in the crisis year of 2022, and therefore can be affected by strong price fluctuations. As a result, short-term market analyzes are always highly speculative and dependent on current developments. Analysts at Cointelegraph however believe that Ethereum will first test the resistance up to $1,700 and if it manages to break it, it can come back to $1,800.

Some news can act as price drivers for Ethereum. With the growing energy crisis and rising energy costs due to various economic and ecological conditions, calls for sustainable and low-consumption solutions for cryptocurrencies are getting louder. For example, the high energy consumption of bitcoin mining is well known. Ethereum reacts quickly here and since the new upgrade is using a less energy-intensive proof-of-stake blockchain instead of the previously used proof-of-work blockchain. According to the company, this enabled the company to reduce its energy consumption by 99.9%. In this way, it is planned to respond now to regulations that may exist in the future on consumption.

What are the ETH alternatives?

A number of promising projects are starting up again in the sector, and their publication is already being prepared. Another project that is in the early stages and could offer a promising alternative to ETH is C+ Charge.

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1 $CCHG = $0.01300 USD
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— C + Charge (@C_Charge_Token) January 23, 2023

C+Charge is a company focused on building a robust peer-to-peer (P2P) payment system for electric vehicle charging stations. The system is based on blockchain technology and allows users to pay for charging their electric vehicles with the C + Charge Utility Token. The ecosystem around the CCHG token intends to take a step towards a sustainable future by creating innovation in the field of electromobility solutions. Accordingly, the developers want to use the project to create a network of “charging stations around the world” that users can use to collect carbon credits for charging vehicles.

CCHG token is currently in presale and has already raised $370,000 from investors. In the first pre-sale stage, users can buy the token for $0.013 per coin. There are a total of four pre-sale stages to be made available for C+ Charge. The price of the token is expected to rise to $0.0235 per coin in the final phase.

According to the developers themselves, C+ Charge has concluded the first international partnership with Perfect Solutions Turkey, according to which at least 20% of the charging stations for electric vehicles in Turkey are to be included in the C+ Charge network . At least for users in this country, this would mean that the project could be used for the first time.

Ethereum Technology: A clear differentiation from Bitcoin

Canadian-Russian developer Vitalik Buterin introduced Ethereum in 2015. The network is an open source blockchain platform designed to enable developers to build and run decentralized applications. Unlike the original use of Bitcoin as a pure cryptocurrency, Ethereum allows the use of smart contracts.

The ETH ecosystem allows developers to build and run their own decentralized applications on the platform. This has made Ethereum one of the most widely used blockchain platforms for developing decentralized financial services, supply chain management, and other applications. Many other currencies and projects are also based on the Ethereum blockchain.

Ethereum, like Bitcoin, was originally made by mining ETH, the ecosystem’s native token. Meanwhile, however, the proof-of-stake method is used, which does not require the computing power which is harmful to the environment. Ether is used to make transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum does not have a limited supply of ETH tokens.