By
Temitope Olatunji
April 18th, 2024
The attainment of the new ATH by Ethereum has duly reawakened the prospects of the digital currency to take Bitcoin over in terms of market capitalization in the future.
Ethereum (ETH), the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is on a tear, beating its own pace as it sets a new All-time High (ATH) price record. From its lowest trading price of $3,529.59 in the past 24 hours, Ethereum has surged to a high point of $3,981.26, in a rally that has realigned the bulls towards the ambition of crossing the $4,000 psychological mark.
Ethereum has broken away from the long-term correlation with Bitcoin (BTC), charting its own course, as the entire market sees increased interest from both retail and institutional investors. Ethereum crossed the $3,000 price level barely a week ago, and its outperformance has reaffirmed its zeal to close up the market capitalization gap with BTC. In the past 24 hours, Ethereum has grown by 10.55%, and by 37.29% in the past week. At the time of writing, Ether is exchanging hands at $3,929.96, per data culled from CoinMarketCap.
Per the current performance and valuation of Ethereum with a market cap of $457.19 billion, the cryptocurrency is now more valuable than several Wall Street firms. Examples of companies in this regard include Square Inc (NYSE: SQ), Pfizer Inc (NYSE: PFE), Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE: GS), and e-commerce giant Walmart Inc (NYSE: WMT) amongst others.
Network Convenience No More a Scare
Ethereum’s age-long problem of high gas fees is still inherent, however, investors choose to look towards the future potentials of the decentralized finance (DeFi) focused network. The Ethereum Foundation has been working on migrating the entire protocol from the Proof-of-Work (PoW) network to a more scalable Proof-of-Stake (PoS). This migration is significant as it is billed to help address the congestion on the network, and eventually, the high gas fees.
While a lot of work has been put into the PoS model pursuit also known as Ethereum 2.0, marked by the launch of the Beacon Chain last year, the more imminent EIP 1559 upgrade is perhaps a good catalyst for an ongoing bull run. The latter upgrade will restructure the remuneration system for transaction confirmation, while also turning the coin into a deflationary asset.
The prospect of a brighter future for the Ethereum network, marked by a committed team of developers, and a burgeoning embrace by Smart Contracts has re-awakened investors’ interest in the network. This has prompted Ethereum proponents to double up on their accumulation of Ether, thus pushing the price towards new price levels.
Ethereum All-Time High: Hopes to Flippen Bitcoin on the Horizon?
The attainment of the ATH by Ethereum has duly reawakened the prospects of the digital currency flippening Bitcoin in terms of market capitalization in the near future. Bitcoin has doubled its price this year while Ethereum has quadrupled in price. With the BTC market cap currently pegged at $1.08 trillion dollars, a continuous upsurge in Ethereum will see the coin worth as much as half the BTC market cap.
Proponents believe the more the gap closes, the higher the possibility of Ether becoming the world’s most valuable digital currency. Then, many will come to understand that crypto means business.