Ethereum price surges to all-time high on the heels of new market-wide rally
Over the last few weeks, ETH’s value has surged by more than 15%, outperforming Bitcoin.
- Experts believe Ether will continue to scale in the near term as a range of important metrics thrive.
- The European Investment Bank (EIB) is looking to issue a two-year 100 million euro digital bond using the Ethereum blockchain.
- Open interest related to Ether options has increased 80x in recent months.
The last 24 hours have been quite positive for the cryptocurrency market, with all of the coins in the top 10 by total market capitalization witnessing decent gains. Ether recently hit an all-time high value of $2,735 only to retreat back slightly. At press time, the premier altcoin is trading at $2,728.
On Ether’s rising dominance, Tim Frost, CEO of DeFi investment platform YIELD App, told Finder that as BTC continues to lose its historic market dominance — currently sitting at 47% of the market — ETH is looking increasingly stronger.
European Investment Bank set to release an ETH-based digital bond
As Ether continues to surge and reach record levels with seemingly each passing day, a number of analysts believe that the altcoin’s ongoing ascent can, in part, be attributed to the European Investment Bank’s (EIB) decision to launch a “digital bond” using the Ether ecosystem.
As per reports, the EIB is looking to issue a two-year, 100 million euro digital bond, whose sale will be led by a number of prominent financial institutions including Goldman Sachs, Banco Santander and Societe Generale. In fact, just last week on April 23rd, a spokesperson for Societe Generale announced that the company had issued a 100 million euro bond as a security token on the public Ethereum blockchain via one of its subsidiaries, Societe Generale SFH.
Looking ahead
It’s no secret that over the course of the last few months, the Ethereum network has been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism, especially regarding its congestion and transaction fee-related issues. In this regard, following the recent Berlin hard fork, the average gas fee to facilitate transactions within the Ether ecosystem seems to have reduced to more manageable levels. This has resulted in increased trading across a number of popular decentralized exchanges including Uniswap and SushiSwap.
Lastly, per a recent report released by crypto investment advisory firm Two Prime Digital Assets, Ether options open interest has grown by over 80 times in recent months. This is due to the fact that an increasing number of institutional players are now starting to look at ETH as a hedge against “outsized volatility events.” A similar growth spurt has also been witnessed by the ETH futures market, with data showing that open interest has increased by over 20x in recent months.
Interested in cryptocurrency? Learn more about the basics with our beginner’s guide to Bitcoin, dive deeper by learning about Ethereum and see what blockchain can do with our simple guide to DeFi.
Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing
Picture: Finder
