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While Bitcoin (BTC) is still struggling to retake the $60,000 price level, Ether’s (ETH) rally goes on unabated. In fact, the second-largest cryptocurrency set a new milestone by soaring past $500 billion in market capitalization as the crypto set a new all-time high this week.
On Wednesday, May 12, 2021, Ether set another record when it surged as high as $4,346, according to Cointelegraph. At that price level, ETH’s market capitalization crossed the $500-billion threshold reaching as high as $505 billion.
At the time of writing, Ether’s price retreated slightly as it traded at $4,303 based on Coinmarketcap data. Meanwhile, its market capitalization also declined slightly to $498 billion.
With its rally, Ether is now valuable than the largest bank in the U.S. JP Morgan Chase, and payments giant Visa. JP Morgan’s market valuation is at $488 billion while Visa is valued at $481 billion.
Ether traded at around $731 at the start of 2021. This means that at its new all-time high of $4,303, the crypto has already risen by around 488 percent this year. Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s year-to-date return is only around 104 percent.
After Bitcoin, Ether is now the second cryptocurrency to reach a market cap of $500 billion. Compared to BTC, however, it took ETH considerably less time to do so.
Bitcoin, which was launched in January 2019, took almost 12 years to hit the half-trillion-dollar mark. For comparison, Ether only took five years and 10 months to achieve the milestone as it was launched in July 2015.
The rally is fueled by optimism with the boom in the decentralized finance (DeFI) sector. Most of new DeFi projects are being built on the Ethereum blockchain resulting a rise in the demand for its native cryptocurrency.
With ETH’s ongoing rally, various price predictions have been offered by analysts. For instance, market research firm FundStrat believes that the crypto has the potential to soar past $10,000 this year.
“We’re maintaining our overweight Ethereum vs. Bitcoin recommendation from April 2020 and reiterating our ~$10.5k price target from January this year,” Fundstrat said. “One reason we remain bullish on Ethereum is the large amounts of development happening there and the resulting economic activity in its digital economy.”
