Ethereum price (ETH/USD) edges higher ahead of hard forks

The Ethereum price (ETH/USD) has edged higher on Thursday morning, as part of an effort to recover from a late Wednesday drop.

The second-largest digital currency on the market had a difficult afternoon session on Wednesday, with its price dropping to a 10-day low in late trading.

The digital coin had enjoyed some success in the morning and the early afternoon, which had allowed its price to rise to a two-day high of $141.34. However, all of the earlier progress was erased in the latter stages of the session, when Ethereum fell to as low as $131.60. While the coin managed to recover some of these losses, it still finished the day at $136.13, below its opening price of $138.03.

Ethereum managed to complete the rebound in the early hours of today’s session, when its price rose to as high as $138.58. The coin has since experienced some minor price fluctuations, but it has remained above the level of its Wednesday close.

February 28 is an important day for Ethereum, as the second-largest blockchain network is set to undergo two hard forks in quick succession. The highly-anticipated Constantinople upgrade will bring a number of changes to the protocol, the most significant of which is the reduction of miner rewards from 3 ETH to 2 ETH. Meanwhile, the second fork, dubbed St. Petersburg, is designed to address a critical vulnerability in the Constantinople code, which was discovered in January and led to the delay of the initial Constantinople launch. Both hard forks will be executed at block 7,280,000.

In today’s trading, the Ethererum price stood at $138.40, as of 12:03 GMT. The digital coin has lost just over 1% of its value, according to data from digital currency tracker Coinmarketcap. Its total market capitalisation currently stands at just over $14.5 billion.