Ethereum, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has surged past $3,800 for the first time since December 2021.
Since the market opened for business today, Ethereum has so far rallied and continues to trade with a strong tone. At the time of writing, the currency was trading just above $3,800, up by almost 2.6 percent in the last 24 hours and 9 percent since January 2024, data by CoinGecko revealed on Wednesday.
Ethereum also surpassed $466 billion in market cap earlier this week.
Amid Ethereum’s big gains of late, its upcoming network upgrade scheduled to go live on March 13 also enticed investors to bet big on the digital currency second only to Bitcoin in market cap. This upgrade will improve the Ethereum network and tackle scalability challenges. Once fully integrated, the network is poised to empower Ethereum to effectively process over 100,000 transactions per second.
Overall, crypto markets showed healthy gains since trading resumed on Monday morning as Bitcoin initially built on its weekend bulls, surging to a new all-time high of $69,170 earlier today, edging the previous high set in November 2021. It later crashed to $60,000, losing 12 percent of its market cap before easing trends at $63,515 at 12 PM PKT, according to CoinGecko data.
At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $66,575.