The price of Ethereum reached a record high on Friday, surpassing its previous peak from May this year. The second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap hit a high of $4,401, the first time the coin has traded above $4,400.
The all-time high comes just over a week since Bitcoin hit its record following the launch of the first Bitcoin Futures ETF, the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (NYSE:BITO).
Altair Network Upgrade
The new record for Ethereum comes in the wake of the Altair network upgrade. The Beacon Chain upgrade is another step towards the Ethereum blockchain moving towards a Proof-of-Stake mechanism, rather than Proof-of-Work. Proof-of-Stake is a less energy-intensive model than Proof-of-Work as it doesn’t require the same computing power to mine coins.
The Altair upgrade is another hurdle that has been overcome before the launch of Ethereum 2.0 and the switch to Proof-of-Stake, which is expected to occur in 2022.
NFT boom
The booming interest in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is also helping Ethereum push to new highs.
Overnight a CryptoPunk NFT sold for $530 million (half a billion dollars!), however, the transaction was not all it appeared.
According to Coindesk, the purchase was made by a flash loan contract where the purchaser was also the seller of the NFT. Once the transaction had gone through, the Ethereum was then sent back to the original account and the loan was repaid.
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