The Ethereum price retreated slightly on Thursday as investors focus on the London hard fork. The ETH coin is trading at $2,682, which is slightly below the overnight high of $2,767. It has a market cap of more than $313 billion, making it the second-biggest coin after Bitcoin.
What happened? Ethereum has been among the best-performing cryptocurrency this week. The coin has jumped by more than 17% in the past seven days. In contrasts, Bitcoin has declined by more than 2% while the Binance Coin and Cardano have jumped by less than 10% in this period.
The strong performance is mostly because of the London hard fork that is happening between today and tomorrow. This fork will see several key features added to the network.
The most important ones are the fact that it will introduce the burning feature that reduces the number of coins in circulation. At the same time, the number of Ethers minted every day will be slashed by a third.
The hard fork is part of the long journey known as ETH 2.0. In it, the developers are transitioning the network from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake. The entire process is expected to complete in the first quarter of 2022. Still, there are some risks involved. In a note about the London hard fork, Viktor Bison of Bison Trails said:
“The London upgrade warrants cautious optimism, as the new ETH supply dynamics may spark a new virtuous cycle where increased price leads to greater adoption and vice versa. The more users and developers that enter the industry, the faster we can grow the crypto-economy, and give power back to the individual.”
The four-hour chart shows that the Ethereum price has been in a strong bullish trend in the past few weeks. The coin has jumped by more than 55% from its lowest level in July. This was also a notable level since the coin struggled to move below it in May, June, and July.
Along the climb, ETH price moved above the key resistance at $2,410. The bullish trend is being supported by moving averages. Therefore, the coin will likely maintain the bullish trend as investors target the key resistance at $3,000. A drop below the now-support at $2,410 will invalidate the bullish view.