The last three days have been good to Ethereum Classic (ETC). Its market cap reached the $2 bln mark for the first time which has enabled the Ethereum fork to push top currencies like Dash, NEO, Monero and Tron behind.

ETC price increase: speculation or more volume?

ETC price reached a new high – briefly at $20 – since May when it touched $26. ETC has been a lot higher than $20 before. Precisely around this time last year, its price was around $15 and during the bull run, that’s between Dec. 2017 and Feb. 2018, it went all the way between $33 and $45. However, there is much excitement at this time because of the bearish state of the crypto market since the start of 2018.

The ETC/USD pair jumped almost 10% after Robinhood announced it will add ETC to its trading app. The platform, which gained popularity for its strong encryption and the protection it offers traders’ funds as a member of Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) against any loss, also allows ETC to be purchased with fiat on a commission-free custodial service.

This precedes the proposed addition of ETC to the consumer market of the Coinbase platform. By Tuesday, Aug. 7, the US-based platform seeks to announce its readiness to accept inbound transfers of ETC. It intends to allow 24 to 48 hours of inbound transfers for clients through Coinbase Pro and Coinbase Prime before enabling trading.

Coinbase exchange is major. Its Prime clients are Coinbase’s professional trading platform for institutional clients. They access the same diversified liquidity pool underpinning all Coinbase products through a professional trading platform designed for institutional clients. The Coinbase Pro platform offers individuals the ability to trade a variety of digital assets on a secure, insurance backed platform. Assets would only be made available to Coinbase Consumer after they have been listed on Coinbase Pro and Prime. In the case of ETC, Coinbase plans to add support for it on Coinbase Consumer when sufficient liquidity has been established which could be in approximately one or two weeks after trading begins on Pro and Prime.

Since it will not be available on the platform for Coinbase Consumer until about two weeks, there are suggestions that ETC will seem affordable to traders seeking to overturn the boring and bearish market of late thus resulting in an increase in demand with time. If that happens to be the case, then it will indicate that more people are likely to buy ETC and the price increase won’t be based on speculation but with more volume.

On the other hand, there is a view that the proposed Coinbase listing is not enough to sustain ETC price rise and keep it in the top ten cryptocurrencies with the largest market cap ranking. The argument is that price spikes, especially on Coinbase, are usually followed almost immediately by about a 75% correction hence ETC is likely to go back to its previous price.