It’s been a stellar week for Ether as its price hit an all-time high of over $3400 on Tuesday, extending its rally with gains of more than 300% this year. The coin has quadrupled in value since the start of 2021 and some experts believe there’s more to come.
CEO and founder of deVere Group, Nigel Green, believes Ethereum’s time is now, and the digital currency is in the right position to increase its market share.
“Ether is one of the main beneficiaries in the wider explosion in the cryptocurrency market,” he said. “The boom over recent months has been fueled by soaring interest from major institutional investors and growing recognition that borderless digital currencies are the future of money. This momentum is likely to build further in the near-term and I believe Ether will hit $5,000 within seven days.” said Green.
Ethereum is the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency and has seen a growth of over 320% from the beginning of the year compared to Bitcoin’s 98% – which is still very impressive.
There are numerous factors contributing to the rise in Bitcoin prices. Some believe increased institutional interests and major companies investing in cryptocurrencies like Tesla’s $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin as part of their plan to accept digital currency as payment.
But Ethereum is very different to Bitcoin. Ether is the digital token that is held and exchanged on the Ethereum network and used to power the platform. Ethereum is the name of the network which can also be used as a platform to store data and create or run decentralized applications. This is what makes Ethereum such a versatile network.
The use of Ethereum in decentralized finance, or DeFi applications, has become an exciting topic in the crypto world. In theory, these blockchain-based financial services could bypass banks and brokerages
The European Investment Bank has issued its first-ever digital bond using the Ethereum network just last month. And the world’s second-largest payment system Visa has started settling transactions using the Ethereum blockchain.
The rise of DeFi applications built on Ethereum and the growing institutional interest in blockchain technology is said to be behind the rapid price increases experienced by the Ether token throughout the year.
“Thousands of developers are building applications that recreate traditional financial products in decentralized ways on top of Ethereum, and as more and more users pour in to interact with these apps, they require ETH (ether) to conduct any transaction,” according to Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of the smart contract company Chainlink in a recent article from CNBC.
He went on to say “Second, there seems to be growing institutional interest in the public Ethereum blockchain, as stakeholders play around with ways to leverage the public network.”
It’s also possible that Ethereum has experienced a bigger surge than Bitcoin because of the NFT (non-fungible token) craze that has taken the art world by storm. Ether is the cryptocurrency of choice when purchasing these non-fungible tokens which have become big news of late.
It seems that Ethereum has a very bright future, and may someday, perhaps sooner than we expect, replace Bitcoin as the top crypto on the market.
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