Ethereum Hits a New All-Time High Above $850

As Bitcoin takes some break after its last week rally to above $19,000 before the CME’s Bitcoin futures contracts going live, Ethereum is looking quite a lot strong this week with the cryptocurrency attaining a new all-time high above $850, precisely $866 as per our data on Tuesday, Dec 19.

This rally in Ethereum’s price took it market cap above $20 billion which also contributed in giving the overall market cap a push above $600 billion. there has been a huge buying interest within investors with the average daily volume around $3.4 billion for the past three days.

Moreover, this time there has been a change in the scenario about the volumes. Previously, South Korean exchanges - Bithumb, Coinone and Korbit contributed majorly to the volumes with around 35% of the global Ether trades. While this time, the volumes are majorly coming from US exchanges like the Bitfinex and the GDAX trading platform of Coinbase who have contributed nearly $800 million in daily Ether trades.

Earlier this month, billionaire investors and creator of a $500 million crypto-hedge-fund - Mike Novogratz - has expressed his optimism in Ethereum. He said that Ether token could be valued at $1500 by the end of 2018 and we are already seeing the northward momentum.

The latest rally in the Ethereum price is attributed to a statement made by SEC Chairman Jay Clayton. Clayton talked about the state of ICOs crowdfunding events held on the Ethereum platform. The SEC Chairman has although warned investors of the associated risks with unregulated ICOs but has also made it clear that digital tokens created through ICOs don’t fall under securities category and also not under the SEC’s regulations.

This has given a big breather to Ethereum as many of the ICOs are launched on the Ethereum platform. Ethereum’s versatility in it blockchain network to allow different businesses to build their applications has made it one of the most favored investment option.

We recently saw one such application called as CryptoKitties built on the Ethereum network that allows users to buy, sell and trade kittens on the Ethereum network. The application was an instant hit with too many players associated and soon caused a congestion in Ethereum’s blockchain network.

However, it received a good amount of acknowledgment for demonstrating the use of Ethereum network. Even co-founder Vitalik Buterin praised it by tweeting "I actually like the digital cat games. They illustrate very well that the value of a blockchain extends far beyond applications that would literally get shut down by banks or governments if they did not use one.”

But one issue which still the developer team at Ethereum face is regarding the scalability of the network. Co-founder Vitalik Buterin has said that it might take around two to five years for complete development and expansion of network. However, he has earlier expressed that the team aims at achieving Visa-level scalability in Ethereum as well.