Many people who are interested in finding out how the Ethereum network works often ask a question " What is Ether ?" Ether has many complex and unclear definitions, so the answer is not always very simple. If we take a look at Ether, we can consider it as the main fuel, the driving force that makes Ethereum network work properly.
It is a crypto-fuel in the digital currency market. It is a sort of payment that is made by users of Ethereum to the software that executes operations. Ether is also a tool which ensures that numerous developers create high-quality applications on the network, maintaining the Ethereum network at the same time. When cryptocurrency holders make some transactions, they are in fact sending Ether, and not Ethereum, as many can think. The transaction in Ethereum world represents the data package that stores the information that should be sent from one account to another on the Blockchain.
Our top trading bots
What do we use Ether for?
Ether is the only necessary asset to those developers who wish to create applications that will be very useful to the Ethereum Blockchain. Another group of people who might need Ether are those who wish to interact with smart contracts on the Blockchain network.
Ether does not have only one role, it can be used both as a payment asset, and it can be a huge opportunity for those who seek long-term investment plans. As it is the case in the regular stock market, digital currencies can be traded depending on the value of currencies on the market. In 2017, the demand for Ethereum is constantly growing, which makes this cryptocurrency one of the most powerful on the digital market.
So, what is the conclusion? For those who are not interested in developing decentralized applications on the Ethereum network and do not seek smart contracts for interaction, it is not essential to know more than this. But those who wish to make some investments in Ethereum should learn more about it.
Total supply of ETH
Those who wish to know if Ether is infinite should know that it is not the case. In the beginning, nobody has planned to create a currency for financial uses, so it doesn't work as the regular money we use today. The regular money is always backed up by the value of gold, in Ether's case, it is totally the opposite. Ether is not backed up by anything. It was just created a digital currency, not printed on paper.
If Ether was infinite, it would probably become the regular money, as all fiat currencies, but it would also lose value significantly. Ether's growth in value is possible because the total supply of it is limited.
Ether\Bitcoin relationship
Bitcoin technology and currency are actually the essential elements in the existence of Ethereum, meaning that it wouldn't exist without BTC in cryptocurrency world. So, Ether as a crypto-fuel serves as payment for computing operations rather than as a currency.
Ether stats
When investors put their money into something, they usually want to know what exactly they are buying. So, some numbers and statistics should be learned before engaging in Ether investments.
At the moment, there is more than 95 million ETH circulating on the market, with a 24-hour volume of almost $800. When we compare it with BTC, it is five times more than the most powerful digital currency.
Ether was created as the main element to power up the Blockchain technology.The market capital of ETH is around $34 billion at the moment, which is quite huge when we take a look at the total market cap of all digital currencies, which is more than $90 billion. So, ETH makes up almost 23% of the digital market. Five Ethers are made every block to the miner of the block.
Ether's purpose
Ether was created as the main element to power up the Blockchain technology. It means that all those who use the computing power to confirm transactions are being rewarded with ETH. In some way, there are certain similarities to the Bitcoin mining. However, those who want to execute some specific operations on the Ethereum blockchain have to pay in ETH in order to start doing it.