Crypto market dives but Ethereum’s price remains strong — here’s why
ETH’s value dipped by 5+% yesterday. Despite this, the currency is still showcasing weekly gains of around 4%.
- Experts believe that Ethereum will continue to surge in the near term.
- Mark Cuban was recently quoted as saying that it’s the only true payments-centric currency available in the crypto market today.
- Crypto firms like Gemini, WazirX and Ledger have recently made their foray into the NFT sector.
Despite the cryptocurrency market as a whole being faced with a fair amount of negative action over the last 24-hour trade cycle, Ethereum has been able to hold strong after reaching its all-time high of $2,155 recently. At press time, ETH was trading at $2,076.
Thanks to Ether’s recent ascent, the total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market rose above the $2 trillion mark for the first time ever. To put things into perspective, the value of the digital asset sector has risen from $1 trillion to $2 trillion within a couple of months, with this meteoric rise being spurred primarily by Ether and Bitcoin.
To get a better sense of where ETH may be headed in the short term, Finder spoke with Sidharth Sogani, founder and CEO of blockchain analytics provider CREBACO Inc. In his view, the recent negative publicity surrounding the altcoin, especially regarding rising gas fees and network congestion, will most likely not have a negative impact on the currency’s financial outlook, adding:
“I don’t think negative attention is impacting ETH prices directly. The network is too big now to get any hits from such publicity. In fact, according to me, Ether is undervalued.”
He further opined that as we move into the future, Ether will continue to showcase an increasing amount of stability. “The future is good, EIP 1559 will make the network more efficient. POS will make it achieve new heights,” he closed out by saying.
Similarly, providing his take on the matter, Stephane Laurent Villedieu, chief marketing officer for blockchain tech firm RioDeFi, told Finder that even though over the past few months a number of blockchain networks such as BSC and Solana have gained a lot of attention, Ethereum benefits from a number of competitive advantages that ensure its supremacy as a dApp platform at least in the short term. These include:
- First mover advantage. Ethereum was launched six years ago and has a massive community of users and developers around the world.
- Public recognition. Ethereum and its founder Vitalik Buterin are well known by the general public even outside of the blockchain space. Institutional investors have been putting capital in Ethereum via structured financial products such as Grayscale ETH trust.
- Decentralization. Compared to alternatives such as Solana and BSC, the Ethereum network is more decentralized and open.
Ether is gaining mainstream traction
Over the course of the last 90-odd days, the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) market has surged tremendously, with an increasing number of celebrities jumping on board the hype train so as to digitize their various creations as well as gain more crypto exposure.
That said, what’s interesting to note is that since the NFT market is largely built atop the Ethereum network, it has helped the latter gain a lot of mainstream visibility as well as garner more investor demand.
For example, recently, billionaire investor and owner of the NBA franchise Dallas Mavericks spoke out in support of Ether, claiming that it’s the closest thing we have to a true currency within the digital asset space. Not only that, he also revealed that he owns substantial sums of the premium altcoin.
Similarly, just last month, Hong Kong-based tech firm Meitu also announced it had acquired substantial sums of the digital currency, making it one of the first institutional players — along with Grayscale — to go long on the currency.
The NFT craze rages on
On April 7th, six-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady announced he’ll be launching his own NFT platform. Dubbed “Autograph,” the project will look to rope in some of the world’s biggest entertainers, sports personalities and fashion icons to sell their personalized collectibles. The offering is expected to go live sometime during spring.
Similarly, a number of other NFT platforms and marketplaces have also sprung up in recent times. For example, the Winklevoss brothers, owners of the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, released a platform called Nifty. Similar moves were also made by prominent Indian cryptocurrency trading platform “WazirX,” hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger and Crypto.com.
Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing
Picture: Finder
