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Ethereum has toppled several financial payment companies in its price surge to $3000 and above. The Ethereum blockchain network is the preferred choice of the European Investment Bank (EIB) for settling 100 million euros worth of digital bonds.
On late Sunday, May 2, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency moved past its record high of $3000 for the first time in history. Ethereum (ETH) price has gained more than 25% over the last week in an unstoppable northward rally.
At press time, ETH is trading at a price of $3060 with a market cap of $354 billion. At its current valuations, Ethereum (ETH) has outgrown in size some of the oldest traditional financial institutions. Last week, Ethereum (ETH) surpassed PayPal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: PYPL) in size and today it has surpassed Bank of America (NYSE: BAC).
As per the tracking website Infinite Marketcap, Ethereum (ETH) is now the 27th most valuable asset in the world. In fact, if we see the chart, ETH has also outperformed Bitcoin (BTC) consistently since the beginning of 2020. On a one-year-chart, the Ethereum (ETH) price has gained from $200 all the way to its all-time high above $3000, a massive 1300% gain. On the other hand, ETH’s year-to-date returns stand at a massive 300% as the price has multiplied 4x in the last four months.
The recent price rally for ETH comes even as the institutional interest in Ethereum remains high. Last week, the European Investment Bank (EIB) announced it will launch a “digital bond” sale on the Ethereum blockchain. The bank plans to issue a two-year digital bond worth $100-million-euro. Some of the participating banks include Goldman Sachs, Banco Santander, and Societe Generale.
On the other hand, the ETH holdings of the Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) have shot up high. As per data on Bybt, ETHE now holds more than $9.63 billion worth of ETH as of now.
Ethereum (ETH)’s Improving Fundamentals and Updates
The recent price rally in ETH comes on the backdrop of its improving on-chain fundamentals and well as upcoming updates. The EIP-1559 implementation with London hard fork this July will solve the major problem with the rising ETH gas fee. However, the ETH miner community has objected to the update as it will reduce their monopoly in approving ETH transactions and also trim their profits.
Below are some of the key areas where ETH fundamentals show strength.
- The total percentage of ETH addresses in profit has reached an all-time high of 99.87% as per Glassnode data.
- The total number of ETH staked with the Ethereum 2.0 Deposits Contracts has also reached an all-time high of ATH of 4,114,402 ETH. Thus, the total amount of ETH staked has moved past $12 billion at the current price.
- The Ethereum network currently settles a massive $30.5 billion in the day which is twice that of the Bitcoin network.
- The daily active addresses for Ethereum have surged to an all-time high of 625K addresses.
- The open interest for Ethereum futures and options has surged nearly 10x over the last year hinting at strong institutional demand.
Ethereum is showing strength across multiple factors as of now. analysts expect the ETH price to surge past $10K by the end of 2021.