Ethereum, the second-largest coin by market cap, today broke past $900 in a final weekend push. The price is still about $500 off Ethereum’s all-time high of $1,432, which it set in January 2018.
Ethereum’s weekend push means that the coin has risen by 20% in the past day and 43% in the past week. Its current price, $912, means that it has a market cap of $104 billion. This is about a sixth of Bitcoin’s market cap; Bitcoin has a market cap of $626 billion, as of this writing.
Alt-Szn is among us once again. All of the alts were up today: Dogecoin by 70%, VeChain by 26%, Litecoin by 17% and Maker by 15%. Even Tether, the cryptocurrency that’s supposed to be pegged to the US dollar, hit $1.02 today.
Only poor XRP, the coin that often benefits the most from altcoin pushes, fell; the coin fell by 1.41% today and 22% in the past week. Its collapse its down to the lawsuit the US Securities and Exchange Commission slapped on its creators.
Driving the push is Bitcoin, the largest coin by market cap that this week rose to highs of $34,408, an all-time high. That means that Bitcoin has risen by about $4,000 this weekend.
Analysts put this down to an influx of institutional investors, a rogue algo-trader and a surge of activity from retail investors.
Some feel Bitcoin’s staggering rise could be the result of a crossover into mainstream acceptance. Skybridge Capital, the hedge fund of former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, will open a huge bitcoin fund on Monday, and MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor will continue to support the token, after giving it the ultimate vote of confidence with a ten-figure investment.
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