Ethereum price set to climb higher after the London hard fork: Expert analysis
Since embarking on its latest bull run, ETH has been able to incur monthly gains in excess of 30%
- The London Hardfork seeks to ease out some of ETHs existing bottlenecks, particularly its high fees and low transaction throughput rate.
- Historical data suggests that following any major protocol upgrade, Ethereum's value has tended to soar.
- Over the past week, the total market capitalization of the crypto industry has increased by nearly 6%
Ethereum has been surging, as is made evident by the asset gaining 6+% over the last 24 hours. This latest climb seems to have come on the heels of the highly anticipated London Hardfork which is finally going live on the ETH network after at least a month of rigorous testing. At press time, ETH is trading at AU $3,640.
However, it will be interesting to see whether the currency is able to sustain its ongoing price action, especially because in the past protocol upgrades have tended to boost up the price of various digital currencies, only to be followed by subsequent dumps allowing investors to lock in short-term gains.
On the subject, pseudonymous independent analyst Murfski believes that if ETH is able to break past the AU $4k threshold, there is a good chance that the asset may slip back down to the AU $2.7k zone, adding: "In my defense, I was bullish at the bottom. As we approach the range highs you better be cautious. Good luck."
Just as a quick recap, Ethereum's London hard fork seeks to introduce a number of Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIP) — most notably EIP 1559 — which seeks to address the currency's current throughput issues as well as stabilize its high transaction fees. Not only that, the upgrade also seeks to make the altcoin deflationary in nature by burning off gas fees, potentially making Ethereum more attractive to HODLers.
Hard forks have helped push Ethereum's price historically
To gauge what the future may hold for ETH, one need only look at how previous protocol upgrades have had an impact on the altcoin. In this regard, popular crypto analyst Josh Olszewicz highlighted that historically speaking, most of ETH's local highs have tended to come after a period of 80 days after a major upgrade. "If London is similar, local high should occur around late October or early November," he added.
Olszewicz's sentiments are shared by other crypto economists, who believe that while some of Ethereum's major gains may have already been factored in, there is still a lot more room for the currency to foster and grow in the near-to-mid term, price-wise.
Looking ahead
While the general mood surrounding the crypto market seems to be quite positive at the moment, as is highlighted by the fact that the total capitalization of this space has increased by nearly 6%, experts believe that there is still a chance that Ethereum may be faced with some pullback as soon as the London upgrade goes live. Therefore, it will be interesting to see how the coming few days play out for the world's second-largest crypto.
Interested in cryptocurrency? Learn more about the basics with our beginner's guide to Bitcoin, dive deeper by learning about Ethereum and see what blockchain can do with our simple guide to DeFi.
Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing
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