As the cryptocurrency market sustains its rally after reclaiming (and well surpassing) the $1 trillion market capitalization mark, the digital assets domineering the 24-hour trending list continue to change places, with Ethereum Classic (ETC) overthrowing the previous leaders including Ethereum (ETH), Shiba Inu (SHIB), and Terra (LUNA).
In line with this, the increasingly popular Ethereum Classic token has continued to register large interest, recording dramatic gains over the previous 24 hours at 26.19%, according to data retrieved on July 29 from CoinMarketCap.
Optimism (OP), a layer 2 chain on top of Ethereum, ranks second with gains of 51.07% in the last 24 hours. The green token Grove (GVR) is in third place with 8.27%, followed by Solana (SOL) with 9.05%, while Terra (LUNA) now occupies the fifth position on the list, advancing 10.53% over the past 24 hours.
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Ethereum Classic rallying as the Merge approaches
Indeed, Ethereum Classic’s advance in the past 24 hours aligns with the decentralized finance (DeFi) asset’s recent bullish gains ahead of the Merge upgrade that will officially mark the transition of the Ethereum blockchain from the energy-intensive Proof-of-Work (PoW) mechanism to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).
Notably, as the upgrade looms, crypto miners are increasingly more aware that the Ethereum Classic chain will remain a PoW network, with Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin inviting people to switch to the ETC chain if they prefer such networks, referring to it as “a totally fine chain.”
At the same time, Leon Lv, the CEO of AntPool – the mining pool affiliated with major cryptocurrency mining hardware giant Bitmain – announced that his organization had invested $10 million towards the Ethereum Classic ecosystem and would continue financially supporting it.
He made these announcements at Bitmain’s World Digital Summit (WDMS) in Miami, where the manufacturer also declared that the buyers of all of its Antminer models would be able to pay for them using ETC after it launched its latest Ethereum mining model, the Antminer E9, in early July.
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