Ethereum to Australian dollar exchange rate

Ethereum was first proposed in 2013 by programmer and writer Vitalik Buterin. To fund development costs, a crowdsale was hosted during a two-month period in 2014 in which the digital currency “Ether” was allocated to user wallets in exchange for a monetary contribution.

It was the first example of an ICO, or initial coin offering, and is a word play on the term initial public offering. The Ethereum platform went live in July 2015 with a 13% pre-mine, allowing the public to mine the remaining 87% of all tokens.

According to CoinMarketCap, the value of Ether saw a 662% price increase in 2016 and a 13,000% price increase in 2017.

Ethereum’s platform allows for the initiation of smart contracts. Smart contracts can now be developed and modified through Ethereum’s inclusive Solidity programming language, which is most similar to the JavaScript scripting language. Through these smart contracts, companies can distribute tokens for participation in crowdsales. According to Bitcoinist, the market for these crowdsales surpassed $1 billion in market capitalisation by the end of 2017. This is in comparison to the $10 million in market capitalisation at the start of the year.

The creation of smart contracts on Ethereum’s platform also allows for inclusive virtual escrow systems.

Historical pricing of Ethereum

Past performance does not guarantee future growth. For example, just because Ether showed an exponential price increase over the past two years does not guarantee the pattern will repeat.

Ethereum is a cryptocurrency that is subject to volatility. Digital currencies are complex and speculative in nature. Factors such as regulation and government involvement will have effects on Ethereum’s price. After Litecoin founder, Charlie Lee, confirmed rumours of China placing bans on crypto exchanges, Ethereum’s price decreased from AUD$490 to AUD$267 from September 14-17.

After the Public Bank of China’s official ban on cryptocurrency exchanges on September 28, Ethereum entered a bearish phase. It would take nearly 70 days, until 22 Nov 2017, for Ethereum to regain its previously attained value of AUD$490. The prices were according to CoinGecko and correlated to Charlie Lee’s published tweets.

Similar to bitcoin, there will only ever be a certain amount of Ether produced. At most, there will only ever be 97.06 million Ether in circulation.

Prices are affected by supply and demand. As demand for the crypto increases, the price will increase as well.

However, unlike traditional assets such as stocks, Ethereum has currency value in addition to technological utility (smart contracts), giving it two possibilities for price increase.

Things to consider before buying Ethereum

Ethereum’s price increase will depend entirely on the demand for it in the future. Ethereum’s blockchain is widely used to distribute new cryptocurrencies, which many people consider to be a promising factor. Speculators believe businesses will stop looking towards traditional crowdfunding and rather shift towards ICO methods in the near future.

Many startups have shifted their platform to Ethereum and its smart contracts in order to allow a safer, and more profitable, ecosystem for their applications.

On 18 Oct 2017, J.P. Morgan revealed that a permissioned ledger titled Quorum is in development and is being built off the Ethereum blockchain. The purpose of the ledger is to accelerate processing and payment times in addition to ensuring immutable, safe transactions. In our opinion, public adoption is essential for price increase; therefore, a major banking system such as J.P. Morgan showing increased interest indicates a promising future for Ether’s price.

Adoption by the public

2016

Solidity marked the first time a team allowed programmers and developers to integrate a blockchain into their systems and applications. They named the process “Decentralising your application” and then named these newly formed apps dapps.

Ethereum was the second currency added to the most popular US crypto exchange, Coinbase, reaching a partnership on 21 July 2016. This allowed new users to test out Ether with just a debit or credit card.

2017

On 17 Oct 2017, the Ethereum blockchain executed a hard fork in order to establish faster block confirmation times. The fork was named Byzantium. This was following bitcoin’s August hard fork which created Bitcoin Cash.

The team states their core beliefs in the following excerpt from the Ethereum website:

“The Ethereum Foundation’s mission is to promote and support Ethereum platform and base layer research, development and education to bring decentralised protocols and tools to the world that empower developers to produce next generation decentralised applications (dapps), and together build a more globally accessible, more free and more trustworthy Internet.”

Cryptokitties, the world’s first blockchain game, was launched in early December 2017 on the Ethereum blockchain. The game involves the breeding, buying, selling and nurturing of virtual kittens. These kittens could then be sold from the blockchain in exchange for Ether. The launch of Cryptokitties was so successful the Ethereum network became congested and sometimes unusable for days at a time. The influx of users created network delays and transaction errors. Although the congestion was viewed by some as negative and unstable, we believe it demonstrates the high demand for such a platform. Some virtual kittens have reportedly been sold for over $240,000, and at the time of writing, some have even been bid on for higher amounts.

In March 2017, a group of collective blockchain companies, Fortune 500 companies and banking affiliates joined together to start the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance. The alliance has the goal of implementing the Ethereum blockchain to instigate easier, faster and seamless technological usage. J.P. Morgan, Microsoft and UBS are among some companies partnered in the alliance.

Stay tuned to see what’s on Ethereum’s roadmap for 2018.