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| Ethereum surpassed $ 4000 for the first time |
As the world's second largest cryptocurrency continues to rise, Ethereum soared to over $ 4,000 on Monday, setting a new high.
According to CoinGecko data, Ethereum's price has increased nearly 7% in the past 24 hours, to $ 4,145.
The total market cap now stands at $ 476.3 billion, less than half of Bitcoin's market value of $ 1.1 trillion.
While investors are expecting returns from other cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrencies have seen huge gains recently.
Bitcoin is down over 2% in April while Ethereum is up over 40%.
Due to the growing interest in this area, the value of the entire cryptocurrency market is currently estimated to be around $ 2.5 trillion.
Earlier this year, major investors and some buying companies (like Tesla) flocked to Bitcoin as a potential inflation hedge tool as central banks around the world print cash to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus economy.
Major Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are also trying to give their wealthy clients access to Bitcoin.
However, some investors have yet to enter the cryptocurrency market. Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at Bank of America Securities, said: “The rise in Bitcoin appears to be the biggest bubble in history.
“This product did not have such basic properties for that period,” said Stephen Isaacs of Alvin Capital.
The Ethereum Network was founded in 2013 by Russian-Canadian programmer Vitalik Buterin and a group of other software developers and it enables users to create apps as well.
Although Bitcoin proponents see it as a store of value similar to gold, Ethereum's goal is to become a decentralized Internet infrastructure that is not under the control of any central authority.
The decentralized internet forms the basis of the widespread cryptocurrency trend DeFi, which aims to use blockchain technology to take back traditional financial products.
Ethereum has also benefited from the emergence of NFTs, which are digital assets designed to represent ownership of unique virtual objects, as many non-tradable tokens (such as CryptoKitties and CryptoPunks) operate on Ethereum.
However, this business boom has caused congestion on the network and Ethereum is currently doing an ambitious upgrade that could in theory reduce transaction time and reduce the amount of energy required to process transactions.
Both Bitcoin and Ethereum have been criticized by environmental scientists over the impact of cryptocurrency mining on the climate.