While the industry is still abuzz over Bitcoin’s surge toward new yearly highs during last week’s rally, the world has also caught wind of some exciting news about the world’s 15th largest cryptocurrency based on market cap: Ethereum Classic.
As of today, January 22nd, 2020, Grayscale’s Ethereum Classic Trust has announced its financial commitment to fund further development of the Ethereum Classic blockchain over the course of the next two years.
According to a message from the executive director of the ETC cooperative, Bob Summerwill, the Grayscale Ethereum Classic Trust has committed to donating one-third of the Trust’s management fees to the ETC cooperative each quarter of 2020 and 2021 in order to continue their support of the Ethereum Classic ecosystem.
According to recent estimates, since 2017, Grayscale has managed to donate roughly $1.1 million towards the development of Ethereum Classic’s blockchain.
In fact, according to data released by the ETC Block Explorer, Grayscale’s Ethereum Classic Trust is one of the largest investors in ETC, holding an estimated 14% of the total supply of ETC coins.
Grayscale also manages some $80 million in their ETC vehicle, spread across nearly 10 million shares each worth about 0.92 ETC.
According to Bob Summerwill, the financial commitment “is a big vote of confidence which we deeply appreciate. This funding allows us to continue our support of the ETC protocol and ecosystem. We will provide grants for key projects, as we have through 2018 and 2019.”
In other news, Ethereum Classic’s price is sitting in around $9.34 and its parent cryptocurrency, Ethereum, is currently valued at $168.89, up 1.9% in the last 24 hours.
More recently, and thanks to project funding from major investors such as Grayscale’s Ethereum Classic Trust, ETC has been able to work at improving its interoperability with its sister blockchains via new hard forks and entire system-wide updates.
And while the funding is good news for the ETC cooperative itself, it might be even better news for ETC investors who have witnessed an increase of 4.8% in ETC’s price value over the course of the past 24 hours.