Bitcoin's little brother Ethereum is at an all-time high
It's not only Bitcoin that's breaking records these days.
Now that the dust around the cancelled Bitcoin fork has settled, several other cryptocurrencies are booming.
Ethereum, a cryptocurrency that's also a platform for decentralized apps, has hit a record high on Friday, surpassing the price of $410 for the first time since June. It's currently trading at $442 according to CoinMarketCap, with a market cap of more than $42 billion.
The price rise comes weeks after a bug in a popular Ethereum wallet Parity froze $150 million worth of ether (Ethereum's currency), which caused a short-lived price drop for Ethereum.
But more importantly, with a 30% price rise in a week, Ethereum finally seems to be catching up with Bitcoin, which recently hit an all-time high of about $8,200. The price of these two cryptocurrencies, widely regarded as the two most promising projects in the world of crypto, correlated closely until July this year. Then, Bitcoin's price took off and Ether was left behind.
Still, looking at this year alone, Ethereum's price rise is more impressive than Bitcoin. In January, you could've bought 1 ether for about 8 bucks. That's a 5,500% price rise compared to current price.
The price of Ethereum may be rising on the news that Ethereum might get its own derivatives market, as well as prediction by Bitcoin investor Mike Novogratz that the price of ether will reach $500 this year. The fact that Bitcoin no longer seems to be in trouble, and a long line of upcoming ICOs -- token crowdfunding events typically run on the Ethereum platform -- surely aren't hurting Ethereum, either.
Disclosure: The author of this text owns, or has recently owned, a number of cryptocurrencies, including BTC and ETH.
Topics Bitcoin Cryptocurrency
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
