Ethereum price hits all-time high

The price of ether hit $1,439.33 on January 18, overtaking its previous high of $1,432.88 three years ago

The price of ethereum has hit an all-time high after doubling in value in less than a month.

The cryptocurrency reached $1,430 (£1,044) on Tuesday, according to CoinMarketCap’s price index, having previously peaked just below $1,400 in January 2018.

The price of ether hit $1,439.33 on January 18, overtaking its previous high of $1,432.88 recorded a little over three years ago. Although there have been setbacks along the way, the overall trend is a positive one for ether. Since it was first made available for public sale in 2015, the digital asset has seen its value increase by more than 1000%.

It marks a remarkable comeback for ethereum, which crashed to below $100 in the months following its 2018 high.

It experienced a steady recovery throughout 2020 until a sudden price surge in late December took its value from around $600 to its current record highs.

Ethereum’s resurgence comes amid a market-wide bull run that has seen major gains for most major cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and litecoin.

Back in December, the Ethereum network had major news to share with its followers, announcing that the next generation of the Ethereum blockchain, Ethereum 2.0, had gone live. Among the new improvements included within Ethereum 2.0, the blockchain network will be able to greatly increase the number of transactions it is able to process per second.

Analysts have referred to the sky-rocketing prices as the 21st century gold rush, with computer-savvy entrepreneurs using high-powered machines to digitally mine the cryptocurrencies.

The underlying technology of these digital currencies mean new units are generated by solving complex mathematical problems that require vast amounts of computing power. For example, 6.25 new bitcoins are generated every 10 minutes by this process, which is roughly the equivalent of $220,000.

A report last year by Coherent Market Insights estimated that the cryptocurrency mining market would exceed $38 billion by 2025.

This is still only a fraction of the current value of the cryptocurrency market, which recently surpassed $1 trillion for the first time.

The market has been boosted by a variety of factors, including increased institutional investment during the coronavirus pandemic, but ethereum’s meteoric rise can largely be pegged to a resurgent decentralised finance (Defi) industry.