Update (Dec 17, 2018): Since mid-October, AE has been in a significant downtrend, losing more than 75 percent of its market capitalization and token value in the last two months. Because of this, the short-term forecast for Aeternity is somewhat bleak, with the cryptocurrency looking to close the year at between $0.33 and $0.38. Until AE retakes at least $0.50, we do not consider it to be a strong buy. It may be wise to consider not investing in Aeternity or any other ERC20-based token while the market is down.
Aeternity (AE) is a blockchain platform built for the creation of scalable smart contracts. As an open source distributed computing platform, Aeternity has a wide variety of potential use cases, ranging from a distributed DApps ecosystem, trust-free exchanges and a project crowdfunding platform.
The fundamental unit of Aeternity is known as an Aeon (AE), a cryptocurrency with no fixed maximum supply. The Aeon token functions much like ether, being the utility token used to power smart contracts and the Aeternity virtual machine. Besides this, AE is also used for staking and as a digital currency used for peer-to-peer payments.
Since the beginning of 2018, Aeternity (AE), like the rest of the crypto industry, has suffered extraordinary losses, seeing its market capitalization fall from as high as $1.16 billion down to just $80 million as of writing — close to a 93 percent loss.
At the time same, Aeternity has fallen from a peak position of 29th largest cryptocurrency by market cap down to just 47th position as ERC20-based tokens have taken the most damage during this bear period.
Having lost almost 70 percent of its value in the last month alone, Aeternity (AE) is looking likely to close 2018 at its lowest price in over a year. Despite this, Aeternity is expected to blossom in 2019 and beyond as the switch to the mainnet is completed and its long-term roadmap is executed.
Fundamental Analysis
Fundamentally, Aeternity (AE) is very similar to other smart contract capable blockchains, offering a platform for the launch and operation of smart contracts and decentralized applications.
During its hugely successful ICO in April 2017, Aeternity managed to raise a colossal 224,750 ETH & 1,456 BTC, at the time worth approximately $12 million. Shortly after this, 82,000 ETH was stolen from the ICO wallet through the parity multisig hack, an amount that has not yet been recovered.
Right now, Aeternity is competing in one of the most crowded niches — smart contract platforms. Unfortunately, this also means it is up against some heavy hitters, including EOS, Ethereum (ETH), TRON (TRX) and Cardano (ADA), all of which have achieved much higher success.
Since the vast majority of these platforms all make similar claims, e.g. unlimited scalability, global adoption and huge improvements to efficiency, it remains to be seen which will deliver on its promises. As it stands, Aeternity does not stand out as a front-runner in this race.
Unlike other platforms, Aeternity (AE) has several key features built into its foundations, including on-chain oracles, state channels, and on-chain governance, each of which are typically implemented as second layer solutions in competing blockchains.
Aeternity believes that implementing these features at the core protocol level will make the platform much more accessible to developers, allowing Aepp (Dapp) developers leverage state-channels and its diverse node roles as soon as the platform launches.
Technical Analysis
In line with the rest of the cryptocurrency market, Aeternity (AE) has had what could be considered a bad run for the majority of 2018, losing a substantial fraction of its market capitalization.
Since the early May 2018, the Aeternity (AE) market has been in a steep decline, seeing the AE token value fall below 35 cents for the first time since Nov 2017.
Prior to this, Aeternity had two major spikes, the first resulting in more than 1,500 percent growth over a one-month period beginning Nov 2017, and a second smaller spike of only 400 percent between April and May 2018, reaching it’s highest ever value of $5.57.
Like the vast majority of ERC20 based digital assets, AE has gradually lost ground against both Bitcoin and Ethereum over the past year, losing value significantly faster than BTC and ETH as the market turned sour in 2018.
Despite this, Aeternity (AE) has shown the potential for phenomenal gains in the past and may be well-equipped to demonstrate this strength again if market conditions are favorable.
Specialists’ Perspective
As with most cryptocurrencies in 2018, Aeternity (AE) entered the year with high hopes, expecting to continue the 2017 rally well into 2018 and reach previously unseen heights.
Early predictions for Aeternity were typically ambitious, often projecting the coin would continue growing exponentially well into the future, potentially seeing it reach over $100 by the end of 2018. However, since the market turned for the worse, these extremely bullish predictions have become few and far between for AE.
Now, for the most part, predictions related to Aeternity (AE) are bearish for the short-term, and bullish for the longer-term, expecting that Aeternity will continue to fall for a short period before spiking tremendously at some later date.
WalletInvestor, a website focused on long-term price predictions has a particularly bearish view on the future of AE, predicting that the token might lose as much as 100 percent of its value in the near future, predicting that Aeternity will be worth close to zero by September 2019.
TradingBeasts, on the other hand, have a polar opposite view on the future of Aeternity (AE) — projecting that the token will reach a minimum price of $1.53 by Jan 2019 and gradually increasing to $2.60 by Q4 2021.
CoinSwitch is also bullish on Aeternity, forecasting an impressive increase of more than 2,000 percent — achieving a peak valuation of close to $8 within the next five years. Arguing that improvements in scalability and blockchain security will catapult AE to almost 40 percent higher than its all-time high.