coinnounce.com
The second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, rose 3% on the Bitstamp exchange to $3,051.99 by lunchtime in Asia. It is up more than 300% for the year so far, easily outpacing a 95% rise in the more popular bitcoin. In part, the massive winning rally is a catch-up to late 2020 gains in bitcoin, said James Quinn, managing director at Q9 Capital, a Hong Kong cryptocurrency private wealth manager.
“It also reflects improvements to the ethereum blockchain.”
As reported by Reuters, James Quinn said that the winning rally also reflects improvements to the Etherum blockchain. He added that a growing shift towards “DeFi,” or decentralized finance, which refers to transactions outside traditional banking for which the ethereum blockchain is a crucial platform. “At first, the rally was really led by bitcoin because as a lot of the institutional investors came into space, that would be their natural first port of call,” he said. “But as the rally has matured over the last six months, you have DeFi, and a lot of DeFi is built on ethereum,” Quinn further noted.
The recent optimism among Ethereum traders has also been attributed to the news about the European Investment Bank’s plans to issue a 100 million digital bond on its blockchain network.
Bitcoin reclaimed the $5,000 mark over the weekend.
The price of the leading cryptocurrency bitcoin reclaimed the $58,000 mark over the weekend after having slipped below $50,000 a few sessions ago. Further buying pressure among traders could send the cryptocurrency over the $60,000 level. However, bitcoin is still well below its record high at $64,895.22. This year has been unprecedented for bitcoin and some altcoins as crypto prices went on touch record highs.