Ether’s price has tumbled from a high of about $15 as the DAO gained momentum to a current price of about $10. That’s instructive, because despite the uncertainty surrounding a potentially major change to the Ethereum codebase, the price has remained relatively stable.
While a decline of 33% might seem like a steep drop, it’s important to remember that this is roughly what ether was trading at in the months before the DAO launched. The DAO triggered a sharp spike in the price of ether as people bought the currency to participate in the experiment. So a drop back to the $10 level, even with a fork looming, is a vote of confidence from the market. At the start of the year, ether was trading at under a dollar.
That suggests the ether market has priced in the hard fork decision. Joe Lee, a co-founder of bitcoin derivatives platform Magnr in London, expects a successful hard fork decision to therefore boost the price of ether. “I see this as validation that the community can build a very powerful system like Ethereum in the right way,” he says.
Lee has a price target of $15 for ether before the year is up, returning it to its pre-DAO hack heights.
Despite the drama over the previous weeks around the DAO hack, counter-hack, and forking proposals, the outlook for Ethereum is, implausibly, bright. Observers point to the way Ethereum developers have rapidly developed alternatives to solve the flood of technical and ethical problems revealed by the hack.
Emin Gün Sirer, the Cornell professor who has perhaps contributed the most research in the aftermath of the DAO hack, contrasts the way the Ethereum world has adapted to his discoveries of technical flaws with the DAO and its subsequent fixes. “The Ethereum community has been amazingly science-driven, open and forthright. The civilness of their response should be a shining example to other communities,”
What do you think ?
I agree ETH-USD will be trading around $16 soon. The $10 level has held as psychological support numerous times in the recent and distant past. I think ETH-USD was on its way to $40 just before the hack which dragged it down from $21, check out my analysis here... https://steemit.com/ethereum/@jholmes91/eth-usd-long-term-reversal I will be writing regular updates on Ether so follow me! :)