Ethereum Classic (ETC) has quickly taken the place of third largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, taking over Ripple.

Last month, the Ethereum community completed the much debated hard fork, which led to the creation of “Ethereum Classic” that believes in the original vision of Ethereum prior to the fork. Gradually, several exchanges and mining pools have announced their support for ETC.

Speaking with EconoTimes, Bittrex CEO Bill Shihara explained: “Exchanges exist for fair price discovery and we’re receptive to the demands of our customers.  Our stance is to remain neutral and simply let the market decide what the value is of a token.”

A similar reasoning was put forward by Chinese cryptocurrency exchange CHBTC that recently added ETC support. The exchange stated that it is neutral as a trading platform for ETC, and does not judge the level of ethics and values.

The price of ETC against the US dollar has jumped from 1.97 levels to 2.95 levels and currently ETC/USD trades at 2.76 levels, at the time of writing (Bitfinex). According to latest estimates from CoinCap.io, Ethereum Classic currently has a market capitalization of more than $225 million, making it the third largest cryptocurrency.

“Most important question for traders is 'will ETC have market price'? There are all reasons to believe that it will. Essentially, ETC is an Ethereum 'spinoff coin' with a wide user base of all current ETH users. Some of them will see the value of transacting on a censorship-resistant chain, some won't. This creates interesting arbitrage opportunities for smart traders. Additional reasoning why ETC is very unlikely to be 'worthless'”, Ethereum Classic website reads.