Ether Prices Spike Above $12 Amid Build Up to Hard Fork

Ether, the native digital currency of ethereum, saw sharp gains this  week while bitcoin experienced comparatively mild price fluctuations  following last week's halving. The price of ether pushed higher during the seven days through 14th July as the broader ethereum  community came closer to implementing a hard fork that would offer a  solution to funds compromised during the demise of the distributed  autonomous organization, The DAO. The digital currency's price continues to experience volatility "as  the fork debate settles down", but it seems to be receiving tailwinds  stemming from the 14th July commit of the nearly completed hard fork  code, algorithmic trader Jacob Eliosoff told CoinDesk. Eliosoff added: 

"A further rise is likely once the hard fork wins out,  which now seems inevitable barring discovery of a serious flaw in that  code."

At press time, the price of ether was just over $11 on Poloniex. Trading earlier today saw the price rise as high as $12.40, trade data shows. 

Approaching a hard fork

The ethereum community has spent several weeks determining how to respond to an incident where 3.6m ETH was moved into a child DAO. While many have referred to this event as "The DAO hack" or theft,  the ether was transferred in accordance with the rules of the  contract, when someone executed the code of The DAO as written. In the aftermath, developers had attempted to agree upon a viable soft fork, but these attempts have failed.  As a result, the ethereum community has been working on a hard fork  which, if executed, would move funds from The DAO to a new smart  contract that would allow stakeholders to exchange DAO tokens for  ethers. During the last week, ether prices reached as high as $11.71, 15.5%  higher than their opening price of $10.14 on 8th July, Poloniex figures  reveal. The digital currency retreated slightly before the week was over, closing at $11.50, up 13.4% for the seven-day period.