Ethereum classic jumps more than 20% as Coinbase adds support

Coinbase, the San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange, is to add Ethereum classic to its roster of digital currencies, boosting the price of the forked digital token.

Ethereum classic is a hard fork of the original Ethereum cryptocurrency: Shutterstock

The exchange currently supports four digital currencies – Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin – and said on Tuesday on its blog that it was beginning the engineering work for supporting Ethereum classic.

Hard fork

The creation of Ethereum classic was the result of a hard fork of the Ethereum network in July 2016 after a number of Ethereum developers challenged a modification of the original digital currency.

A hard fork is a permanent divergence from the current version of the blockchain, essentially creating a brand new protocol that will not accept code from the original version.

Ethereum classic is, at the time of publish, the 18th-largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalisation of $1.5bn. This compares with Ethereum – the second-biggest crypto – with a market cap of $53.5bn.

Coinbase’s support boosted the price of Ethereum classic by 22% to $15.60 versus the dollar.

Adding further products

However, the exchange gave no details on the timetable, other than to say: “When we reach the final testing phase of the technical integration, which we expect to occur over the next few months, we will publicly announce a launch date for trading via our blog and Twitter.”

The company added that it would be adding further products in the coming months, including the ERC20 technical standard and bitcoin forks.