- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Exchanges Bobby Lee, the co-founder & CEO of cryptocurrency exchange BTCC held a vote in the past weeks to decide which crypto the company would list next.The winner was announced yesterday and ended up being Ethereum Classic (ETC).The ETC cryptocurrency has gotten some favor is recent months, getting listed on various Asian exchanges from China, Korea, to Japan.It’s not announced yet whether ETC will be listed on both the company’s Chinese only exchange and its international Hong Kong exchange or just one of them.The final vote tally showed the following results: 47% ETC – Ethereum Classic 40% STEEM – Steem 11% DOGE – Dogecoin 02% XMR – Monero @YourBTCC After 2+ wks, 3 rounds, 190K+ votes, we now have a WINNER in the Battle of Digital Currencies:#EthereumClassic👏👏👏@YourBTCC will list $ETC!

— Bobby Lee (@bobbyclee) May 27, 2017 Further positive news for ETC saw back in April Grayscale Investments go live with its Ethereum Classic Investment Trust, a private investment fund modeled on their first investment trust based on Bitcoin.dell bitcoin ukIn their thesis, Grayscale stated, “Ethereum Classic is a next generation blockchain platform for a new internet infrastructure – one that can dramatically enhance the ways that information and value are shared in the digital economy, unlocking trillions of dollars in untapped economic surplus in the process.bitcoin charts sekFeaturing a flexible and intuitive smart contract programming platform that is powered by ETC, we believe Ethereum Classic may one day be the substrate for a global, secure, and decentralized Internet of Things (IoT).” They also noted the money supply commenting, “Ethereum does not currently include a cap on the ETH supply.bitcoin bezahlen berlin

While there is no guarantee that the ETH supply model will remain as is, it is quite possible that there will be considerably more ETH in circulation than ETC in the future.btc-e bitcoin withdrawalAs a result, ETH would need to generate a substantially higher rate of return to justify a valuation at parity with, or greater than ETC.” ETC is currently trading at around $15 USD at the time of writing, hitting as high as $22 on May 22nd.litecoin anonymityConsidering ETC spent most of the first half of 2017 between $1-$3, long-term holders have been delighted to see a breakout.bitcoin miner in dubaiAs Bitcoin and Ethereum make big news with huge price jumps over the past month, a key question comes to light: which version of Ethereum are investors more likely to make money off now: ETC or ETH?bitcoin number of the beast

While there are a whole variant of options that investors can choose from when it comes to Bitcoin’s blockchain in the form of a host of other altcoins, there is currently only one version of Bitcoin, and that is the unit known by its symbol BTC.ethereum etc ethFor Ethereum, however, there are two versions: there’s the original Ethercoin, denominated by the symbol ETC, and then there is Ethereum, which is the officially-supported unit, available in ETH denominations.ebay bitcoin hardwareDespite both running off the same Ethereum blockchain, the two virtual currencies ETC and ETH have very different market sizes and would appear to have quite divergent trading paths.ETH, the “official” Ethereum, is currently valued at around $20 billion in total, with about a billion dollars of that a day being liquid.ETC, or Ethereum Classic as it is known, has a total market size of $1.6 billon, with liquid trading representing roughly $150 million of that.

In other words, while ETH is much larger in terms of market size, ETC is about twice as liquid relative to its market valuation.To make matters more perplexing, while ETC investors have made about a third as much money over the past 3-month to 12-month period overall, ETH investors are about 10% ahead of ETC holders over the previous month, in which both currencies have risen by more than twice in value.The relatively less-liquid ETH and the long-term comparable difference in price gains is an interesting observation: standing at around 20% historically, it seems to be due to the fact that ETH is the officially-supported version of Ethereum.We can call this the “Vitalik Premium” since it is the premium investors pay for the support of Vitalik Buterin behind ETH: This premium exists as a safety-net as opposed to a being a return-generator; in other words, the premium exists as a protective measure for Ethereum investors who opt for ETH.It is a premium we calculate by working out the return superiority of ETC and dividing it by the liquidity superiority in present day terms and multiplying the result by 100.

The premium in the price of ETH leads to comparatively higher gains for investors in ETC most of the time but also more risk: The relationship between ETH and ETC is fundamentally easier to understand once we bring in Bitcoin as a constant variable between the two.Bitcoin gains correlate with ETC gains by about 1 to 3 over the previous 12-month period, and with ETH gains by about the same over the past 3-month period.Suddenly, over the past month, BTC gain correlations have leaped up, and now converge with ETH by about 1 to 2.This might lead us superficially to believe there was a closer correlation between BTC and ETH than there is between BTC and ETC. This supposition is further supported by looking at the overall variance between BTC and ETH/ETC.Here there is substantial evidence that on a net basis, ETH is in fact highly correlated with BTC, even more so than it is with its sister ETC: by doing a standard deviation average calculation, we can see that BTC correlates with ETH about 97% of the time, while it only correlates with ETC about 19% of the time.

That’s a massive difference.Drilling down into the price movement disparities then, the big difference between BTC and ETH on one side of the table and ETC on the other side seems to be that while BTC/ETH are more reliable short-term trading currencies, that despite ETC’s comparatively larger pool of liquidity percentage wise versus its value, its overall diminished market size means that it is much more reactive in periods where return stabilisation is the norm.In other words, when volatility is low, ETC is at its most active; when volatility is high, ETC takes a back seat to BTC and ETH.This observation is shown up in the comparison between the 6-month-ago and the 3-month-ago changes in all the currencies; while BTC and ETH produced 54% and 115% gains respectively during the second to third quarter period over the last year, ETC slipped back about 10%; in the following financial quarter, while BTC etched up about 50% and ETH made about 250% in gains, ETC leaped nearly four times in value.

Note that in these instances the Vitalik Premium arguably represented great value for investors who are more cautious about short-term losses, since it seems to have ring-fenced the overall trading results of ETH.A similar pattern to that described above can also be found in the first financial quarter of the past year, in which BTC/ETH produced 15% and 7% gains respectively, while ETC jumped about 40% in value.At this point, the Vertalik Premium was probably at its most dear, given that the ETH investors lagged ETC investors by more than 5 times in gains.In the previous one-month period, as bullish gains in Bitcoin have abounded, ETC has taken a back seat to ETH, however, for the first time in a year.Thus, the Vitalik Premium has come to represent – perversely – a sort of discount.There are a number of possible reasons for this, but the chief reason seems to be that Bitcoin buyers are exiting Bitcoin with recent gains and switching over into Ethereum for more action.Remember – BTC and ETH are highly correlated, so ETH is a very natural switching-choice for holders of BTC.

In other words, the most recent ETH buyers (i.e.those in the past one month period) seem to be former Bitcoin holders who now want to up-the-ante.Indeed, a number of Bitcoin investors have recently told me that this is exactly what they are doing.It would make sense that when switching over, the BTC buyers would jump into ETH vs.ETC, since it is the officially-supported currency of the Ethereum Blockchain.For long-term Ethereum holders, the results to draw from this may be somewhat counter-intuitive.For a start, we can be pretty sure that the Vitalik Premium is coming back, and that the past month’s trading history is only a relative aberration in patterns (indeed, on a 3-month to one-year basis the Premium is still very much in tact).This means that ETC is due some hefty volatility – upwards – in the near-term, but will be more stable in a downwards trajectory.Moreover, if the BTC investors are switching over into ETH, then this is even further support for the fact that it’s only a short-term return discount that ETH will hold over ETC, since the action of switching between BTC and ETH in and of itself further correlates the gains between the two currencies.