What's the difference between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic?

[ematt]

...and is one better than the other in terms of investing?

[haroldtee]

...and is one better than the other in terms of investing?

As a newbie, I though the first question you would have asked is the difference between bitcoin and bitcoin cash? Since it happened recently.

However, Ethereum classic is a FORKED CHAIN of Ethereum which makes them a 2 different cryptocurrencies now entirely. I can't give you details on what FORK means now. At least with this clue, google should be of great assistance to you. In terms of investment, that totally depends on you. However, if I were you being a newbie, I will consider going for Ethereum instead.

Don't get me wrong. This does not mean ETC does not have prospect, you can still consider having it in your portfolio just in case. I only decided to give you my own opinion considering you are a newbie.

[rudolfaxl]

Here is the story...
Long days ago there was only one ethereum. There were different ICOs already. One of them was the DAO ICO. During DAO ICO some smart hacker has found a vulnerability at DAO smart contract and used it to hack them for around $60m. Ethereum foundation couldn't let this occurs, so they decided to roll back all transactions to the moment before that DAO hack. But the main thesis of ethereum was immutability and many people was disappointed with their decision. And thereafter hardfork occurs and Ethereum Classic was born. It's the original ethereum blockchain without rollbacks.
Today Ethereum is much more usable. There are many ICO cunducted at ethereum platform. As I know ETC has held only one ICO. BTW ETC shows weakness last time. If I were you I would choose ETHEREUM. It has much higher potential to grow.

[alyssa85]

The following is a pretty good article explaining what went on:

https://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-ethereum-classic/

When Ethereum hard-forked to solve their Dao hack vulnerability, a bunch of people (many of them supporters of bitcoin core) suddenly started mining Ethereum Classic to keep that chain going. I think they were trying to make the point that hard-forks were bad (this was back in 2015 when bitcoin was starting it's argument about blocksizes).

The whole thing (the DAO hack, the hard-fork and the splitting of Ether into two chains) damaged the price and it took over 18 months to recover.

[BitcoinHodler]

they didn't really solve anything though! the fork was just a roll back to get their money back because in fact the Ethereum foundation had a lot of money at stake inside this exploit.
as a matter of fact the similar thing has happened with some other cases but they were small and the foundation had nothing at stake so no "roll back" happened for those

[microtron]

ethereum classic forked into ethereum after someone hacked the coding and stole 50mn off customers. Ethereum has way more potential to grow