sludgefeed.com
Ethereum (ETH) moved higher in definitive fashion Monday after news broke that the CFTC is willing to approve ether futures if the proposed contracts meet all the requirements.
The largest altcoin started Monday morning around $160 and steadily rose throughout the day to just under $180. After a slight pullback, ether is currently trading for $175.05.
Additional interest in Ethereum is likely driven by the build-up to New York Blockchain Week, which features some of the largest names in crypto. However, a recent report by market research firm Diar highlights a more fundamental driver of ETH, the current monthly decentralized application (dapp) volumes.
According to the report, total dapp volume hit a fresh all-time high in April, with nearly 800 ETH used in transactions, which comes out to $130 million over the course of the month. While the report notes that new dapp launches are trending downwards, this is likely due in part to a shift toward higher quality applications being built as low-quality games and gambling applications are already quite plentiful.
As both speculator and app user interest begins to increase, investors will likely look for ETH to take out the next key psychological resistance point of $200.
Ethereum’s current market cap of $18.7 billion makes it roughly 10% of the $187.4 billion crypto market.