Ether Surpasses $2,200 Hours Before Berlin Hard Fork

Ether (ETH) exploded to reach a new all-time high on April 13, 2021, with its next major development update, ‘Berlin, scheduled for April 14. The pending hard fork is expected to take the first steps in addressing Ether’s high transaction fees.

ETH price reached $2,232 on Tuesday setting another all-time high for the second-biggest crypto. The coin’s market cap surpassed $250 billion for the first time. Putting it into context, Bitcoin’s market cap was at the same level barely six months ago, in late October 2021.

Ether’s 1,328% growth in the past 12 years persisted despite huge worries about the Ethereum network’s transaction fees. In February, the mean Ethereum transaction fee reached an all-time high of $38.21, based on data from Bitinfocharts. This made Ether generally unsuitable as a transactional currency.

However, investors hold out some hope for a reprieve from ETH’s unwieldy fees, mostly in the form of the imminent network upgrade that will extensively change the way fees are paid. The ‘London’ upgrade that is scheduled for this summer has attracted the ire of ETH miners, as it features plans to burn some of the fees that would usually be acquired by the mining rig operators.

Wednesday’s Berlin upgrade is anticipated to be less impactful in the near term but will pave way for London and will make up to four major changes to the network as it stands currently. A whole technical breakdown is available on the official release page. However, various changes will be made to the blockchain to mitigate costs for specific transaction types.

A new transaction envelope will ensure that it is easy to package many transactions into a single transfer. It was not the only coin to reach new all-time highs on April 13; Bitcoin also exploded to exceed $63,000, and it seems to have the momentum to rise further.

Also, Binance Coin (BNB) and XRP hit new all-time highs in the past 24 hours. Thus, it seems like the crypto bull run is in full throttle as more investors and institutions come into the nascent crypto market.