Ethereum plummeted by nearly 30%. Could it be Counterparty’s fault?

The price of Ethereum cryptocurrency, ether, has continued to fall over the past week, and the market value of Ethereum fell by nearly 25% overnight on March 19, from $1 billion to $770 million. In addition, the average daily transaction volume of Ethereum also fell by about 270%.

Since entering March, more and more exchanges, trading platforms and financial institutions, such as R3 and Microsoft Azure, have begun to adopt the Ethereum platform to build decentralized applications and process smart contract-based transaction settlements. With the recent successful launch of Ethereum Homestead, Ethereum companies expect that more startups and applications will be able to use Ethereum technology.

Jeffrey Wilcke, co-founder of Ethereum:

“Homestead is the second major release of Ethereum, which includes some protocol and network changes, and users can upgrade the Ethereum network in the coming weeks. Our teams will work together to pave the way for future development, both in terms of the Ethereum protocol and in terms of the development roadmap for clients and sub-protocols.”

Jeffrey Wilcke

Some popular applications and platforms, such as Storj.io, are also considering moving their services and products to the Ethereum network in order to improve transparency and efficiency.

Despite the positive development and adoption of Homestead, Ethereum’s market value has fallen sharply in the past few days due to the resurgence of the Counterparty platform and concerns about speculators.

Counterparty is an open platform that enables users to process settlements based on smart contracts, and they have built a strong and secure market through the Bitcoin network. The platform itself is a copy of the Ethereum platform structure and smart contract processing technology. Recently, the Counterparty team also announced that all services on the Ethereum network can be used on their Bitcoin blockchain. Therefore, by leveraging the power of the Bitcoin network, Counterparty can even build a stronger and more secure Ethereum platform on the Bitcoin network.

Original article: http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/03/20/ethereum-marketcap-drops-30-overnight/
By Joseph Young
Compiled by: Kyle
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/ethereum-marketcap-drops-30-overnight)