Ether rises to a new record high over $3,600

The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency Ether which comes after bitcoin, on Thursday extended a breakaway rally to a new record high of $3,616.10, gathering momentum as investors diverted focus from its main rival. On the Bitstamp Exchange ether was last up about 4.0% at $3,568.92. Bitcoin was down 0.3% at $57,353.03 and about 11% below its record intraday high at $64,895.22 set on April 14.

Ether, the token traded over the ethereum blockchain, topped $3,000 for the first time on Monday. It is up more than 385% this year, compared with 96% for bitcoin. The rise is in part a spillover from flows into bitcoin, which has grown in stature as big-name investors from Elon Musk’s carmaker Tesla Inc to Wall Street investor Stanley Druckenmiller bought in.

Konstantin Anissimov, executive director at cryptocurrency exchange CEX.IO. said: “Ethereum has been able to maintain its positive momentum, a crushing series of all-time highs in the past week. The current all-time high has reignited the ambitious sentiment that ethereum may eventually flippen (supplant) bitcoin by market capitalization in the near future.”

Also, a technical adjustment called EIP (ethereum improvement proposal) 1559, expected to reduce the supply of ethereum and go live in July, has provided a lift for the digital currency. Still, there is a speculative frenzy going on in the asset class. Joke cryptocurrency dogecoin is up by 24,000% over the last 12 months and is now the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Ether

Ethereum is open access to digital money and data-friendly services for everyone – no matter your background or location. It’s a community-built technology behind the cryptocurrency ether (ETH) and thousands of applications you can use today. It’s the world’s programmable blockchain. Ethereum builds on Bitcoin’s innovation, with some big differences.

Both let you use digital money without payment providers or banks. But Ethereum is programmable, so you can also use it for lots of different digital assets – even Bitcoin! This also means Ethereum is for more than payments. It’s a marketplace of financial services, games and apps that can’t steal your data or censor you.