Ethereum Classic's Price Stumbles Amid Suspected 51% Attack

The price of ethereum classic (ETC) is pulling back as a result of a recently reported attack that resulted in a series of blockchain history rewrites.

At press time, ETC is trading at an average price of $5.01 – down more than 7.5 percent in the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

ETC had fallen to an intraday low of $4.93 at 20:00 UTC, which at the time registered a near 10 percent daily depreciation.

Ethereum Classic Price Chart

As can be seen in the above chart, the price of ETC began to see a sell-off after it reached $5.51 at 17:00 UTC yesterday - its highest price since Dec. 26.

Initial reports of the suspected 51 percent attack – by which an entity controls a majority of a network's processing power and can then attempt to rewrite its history – appeared at roughly 5:00 UTC, at which time price was trading at $5.30 and remained stable until 9:00 UTC, when the sell-off began to accelerate. The price would ultimately drop more than 12 percent at 20:00 UTC from its 24-hour high.

While ETC, the 18th largest cryptocurrency in the world by market cap, is not the worst performing cryptocurrency of the day, it is noticeably under-performing the other major cryptocurrencies.

At the time of writing, ETC is the only cryptocurrency out of the world’s 20 largest to report a 24-hour loss above 5 percent. For reference, bitcoin is reporting a minor loss of less than 1 percent today.

Disclosure: The author holds BTC, AST, REQ, OMG, FUEL, 1st and AMP at the time of writing.

Metal slide image via Shutterstock