ETHW hasn’t launched yet—but you can trade right now.

Key receivers

Following the ETHW “merger”, EthereumPoW is due to launch a component that plans to secure Ethereum's proof-of-concept version. EthereumPoW has not been released yet, but the token representing ETHW is available for trading on FTX and other exchanges. ETHW is currently valued at $20.55.

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ETHW is currently trading at $20.55.

Exchanges open ETHW trading

Hours after the Ethereum network successfully completed its “merger” into Proof-of-Stake, exchanges have begun opening spot markets for the ETHW fork token.

FTX appears to be the first to launch a spot market for ETHW around 09:00 UTC. Many users who held ETH on the exchange reported receiving equivalent ETHW in their accounts.

Although FTX users can now buy and sell ETHW on the exchange, users are not buying the token. Instead, FTX issued “IOU” tokens that can be exchanged for tokens when the fork finally launches.

“ETHW represents the potential canonical ETH Proof of Work (PoW) token. If FTX determines that such a token does not exist, the token will be set to zero,” FTX said in a statement attached to the token's trading page on its website. “ETHW is highly volatile and can lose a lot of its value. Please take the time to research the risks involved in trading this product.

Other crypto exchanges seem to have followed FTX's move. Derivatives ByBit also announced that it has opened the ETHW/USDT spot market and will begin withdrawals and deposits as soon as the main Ethereum proof-of-work chain goes live. MXC Global, another exchange that previously promised to airdrop ETHW tokens to ETH holders, has also launched trading pairs for the asset.

According to data from CoinGecko, the ETHW spot market price is currently sitting at around $20.55. At current prices, the asset's market capitalization is estimated at 1.38% of ETH value.

Ethereum PoW fork

In the weeks leading up to the merger, a group of anonymous developers planned to hijack the Ethereum blockchain after the merger. The fork, named ethereumpow, wants to maintain a version of the network with a proof-of-work consensus mechanism. When the network launches, ETHW is set to be distributed to ETH holders.

The official EthereumPoW Twitter account revealed details for the hardfork earlier this afternoon and made several pull requests on the project's GitHub repository. Although EthereumPoW developers have released the network RPC URL and Chain ID, early reports suggest that the network is currently down. Once the network is fully operational in the next 12 to 24 hours, centralized exchanges may be the first to activate deposits of the new token.

Disclosure: At the time of writing this piece, the author owns ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.

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