ethereum hack

Ethereum surges over a thousand dollars

The Asian trading session this morning has been a very fruitful one for Ethereum which has surpassed a thousand dollars a few hours ago. In fact the start of this year has been fruitful for the entire cryptocurrency industry with total market capacity jumping to three quarters of a trillion dollars.

Altcoins have been leading this surge as Bitcoin has remained sideways and unable to gain momentum above $15,500. Analytics website Coinmarketcap recorded a record high of $1,048 for ETH today which equates to just under a 40% increase for the week. Since the beginning of December Ethereum has climbed over 130%. The coin has had a phenomenal year starting out 2017 at just $10 and ending it over $750. Compared to Bitcoin’s rise of 1600% Ethereum has climbed 7400% in the same period.

Along with Bitcoin Ethereum is one of the most established cryptocurrencies and an easy entry point for novice traders and investors. ETH can be purchased with fiat on most of the major exchanges which has no doubt added to its success in the past few months.

According to Mati Greenspan, senior market analyst for social trading platform eToro,

“Ethereum is currently the most established cryptocurrency in the market and many believe that it is the future of the internet. Money continues to flow into blockchain networks and Ethereum is simply the strongest one.”

A number of analysts still feel that Ethereum is undervalued. Its price has been directly influenced by the increasing number of ICOs that are using the platform. In the past 24 hours the market capacity of Ethereum reached $100 billion for the first time. It only lost out second spot to Ripple a few days ago but could easily regain it if momentum continues.

Bitcoin has been proven to be slow and expensive to transfer so traders have been switching to Ethereum to carry out their crypto trades. The network is faster and costs are a fraction of those on Bitcoin’s blockchain. Traders are also buying up Ether to participate in ICOs which are now using it as their primary buy-in currency. With more ERC20 ICOs expected in the early part of this year we can expect the price of ETH to continue upwards.

Binance currently enjoys the largest percentage of trade volume at around 20%. In the past 24 hours that volume has exceeded $7 billion. At the time of writing Ethereum is approaching $1,050, another record price peak.