ETC price surge may be caused by Ethereum miners switching to ETC

The price of Ethereum Classic (ETC) has risen sharply this week. Huobi's market data shows that the current price is $95.87, with a 7-day increase of 172.6%.

On May 6, ETC was traded at $150 on Coinbase. According to Will Foxley of cryptocurrency mining company Compass Mining, ETH miners may switch to Ethereum Classic due to EIP 1559 and Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, which may be one of the reasons for the surge in ETC prices. Currently, Ethereum still uses the proof-of-work consensus, and computers connected to the blockchain need to solve extremely difficult cryptographic puzzles to protect the network and earn ETH tokens.

Earlier, there was news that Ethereum is expected to transition to the Ethereum 2.0 blockchain based on proof-of-stake consensus by the end of this year. This blockchain will eliminate traditional energy-intensive ETH mining, which will affect the profits of existing Ethereum miners.

On the other hand, before Ethereum passes to the new Ethereum 2.0 blockchain, the EIP-1559 proposal will be implemented in the July upgrade, which will also lead to a significant reduction in miner rewards. However, Ethereum Classic has no plans to transition from the Proof of Work algorithm to the Proof of Stake algorithm, which means that ETH miners may want to continue using hardware mining on the ETC blockchain, so many miners may switch to Ethereum Classic.