The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether has reached a new all-time high above $4,600 catching up with Bitcoin’s current rally.
The Ether token, which underpins the Ethereum blockchain network, rose to as high as $4,643 in Asian hours, breaking its previous day’s $4,600 record and pushing the week’s gains to over 10 percent.
With the cryptocurrency market currently in a bullish zone, Ether could look to hit the $5,000 level for the first time in the coming days, according to the market experts. However, the digital asset would need the support of the broader cryptocurrency, with Bitcoin, Binance Coin, Solana, Cardano and other leading cryptocurrencies all rallying at the moment.
Since Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, hit its record high of $67,016.5, other tokens on the base layer of blockchain networks, known as Layer 1 networks, have also gathered momentum. Bitcoin was trading around $63,078 and is up about 117 percent this year, while Ether is up six-fold.
“Ethereum has been the clear winner of the Layer-1s for what we believe will be a substantial shift in a potentially prolonged market sentiment uplift. Ethereum will also continue to play a major role in the NFT and metaverse ecosystem build-out,” said Mr. Ryan Rabaglia, managing director and global head of trading at digital asset platform OSL.
The increasing cryptocurrency adoption by banks, growth of non-fungible tokens (NFT) on virtual gaming platforms, the launch of Bitcoin futures-based US ETFs and a need among investors for diversification in an uncertain interest rate environment have pushed several blockchain tokens, including Bitcoin and Ether. Smaller tokens too have seen rising interest after Facebook rebranded itself into Meta to focus on building the “metaverse”, a shared virtual environment.
According to digital assets researcher CryptoCompare, assets under management (AUM) in digital investment products rose 45.5 percent last month to a record high of $74.7 billion. The total AUM for Bitcoin-based products grew 52.2 percent to $55.2 billion, while Ethereum-based funds AUM increased 30 percent to $15.9 billion.
