Coinbase has unexpectedly announced on its home blog and through twitter that it will be integrating Ethereum Classic over the next few months to be listed sometime in September causing the price of ETC to gain dramatically.
Coinbase Announces Integration of Ethereum Classic
Ethereum Classic like almost every altcoin has been a downward trend over the last 30 days losing over 15% but Coinbases public announcement that it would list the token has bought the speculators out and sent the price up over 22% since the blog and twitter messages went out. The initial price jump from $12.89 to a high so far of $16.10 according to livecoinwatch has already leveled out easing back to $15.70 at the time of writing.
Coinbase has listed all of the details of the integration on its where the announcement was made. They have also answered some of the expected frequently asked questions that might arise. Especially pressing for some would be the statues of any ETC held in GDAX at the time of the 2016 hard fork which Coinbase has assured it will give to exchange users who had Ethereum balances and would be eligible for ETC withdrawals.
It seems that coinbase may have made this early announcement of their intention to list ETC in the coming months to avoid any kind of speculation of inside trading which marred their integration of Bitcoin Cash last December when it’s price hit a high of $8,500 on Coinbase and its GDAX service compared to its trading price of $3,500 on other exchanges.
ETC May Find its Former Highs with Coinbase
ETC which was initially created in July 2016 had a stagnate first year reaching only above the $2 mark in its first ten months but then took off around its one year mark going above $20. It reached its high in January 2018 at just over $47 but has been dropping steadily since mid-March to its recent lows of just over $12 where it was before the surge brought on by the Coinbase announcement.
If for example ETC experiences the kind of pump Zcash took from being listed on Gemini when it gained 40% after the announcement that the Winklevoss brothers trading platform would be listing the coin Ethereum Classic could be pushed back towards its former high price point in the next 24 hours.
Whether Coinbases listing of Ethereum Classic which is expected to happen in September will be enough to see ETC return to its former highs will depend greatly on the performance of the rest of the market. If Bitcoin can manage to break back above security at $8,000 altcoins should follow and ETC could find a much higher price mark as it’s integration date comes closer.