Breaking: Ethereum Hits New All-Time High; The Flippening Near?
Ethereum hits new all-time high just a day after Bitcoin did the same.
Covered:
- Ethereum Follows Bitcoin All-Time High
- Ethereum Outlook
- Neverending Gas Fee Problem
- Did The Flippening Already Happen?
Ethereum Follows Bitcoin All-Time High
Ethereum One-Day Chart Credit: CoinGecko.com
That was fast.
Just a day after Bitcoin broke a new all-time high for the first time since April, Ethereum (ticker symbol ETH) decided to copy its older brother. The smart contract protocol reached $4,361 USD, before dropping considerably amidst an end-of-week sell-off. Ethereum broke its last all-time high back on May 11th.
Recommended: Ethereum Is Emerging From Bitcoin’s Shadow
Currently, ETH is trading in the $4,100 USD range and has a market cap of $485 billion. As per always, ETH is sitting second right behind Bitcoin in terms of total market cap.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin fell as low as $8,200 USD… on Binance US. Everywhere else had the heavyweight champion of crypto closer to the 64k range. It’s unclear what happened, but leverage can’t be blamed this time because Binance US doesn’t allow margin or futures.
Bitcoin is now in the 63k range with some calling BTC overbought. Outlook still remains bullish on BTC for the next few months.
Ethereum Outlook
Since the last time ETH was at 4k (in May):
-EIP 1559 went live
-ETH issuance dropped 57%
-Over 2.3B dollars of ETH forever burnt
-Arbitrum and Optimism launched
-NFT volume quadrupled
-ETH staked in 2.0 nearly doubled
-DeFi TVL up ~20%??????
— B?N (@__DeFi__) October 20, 2021
The new high comes during a rather quiet time for Ethereum. Currently, there aren’t any catalysts like the EIP upgrade driving demand for Vitalik Buterin-led project.
The only real positive news driving the price action appears to be news about the price. In particular, pieces on how so and so thinks Ethereum will hit 10k appear to be en vogue right now. This runs in stark contrast to previous runups this year, where Ethereum’s price rose thanks to the EIP-1559 upgrade, the promise of ETH 2.0, and NFT mania.
The optimism is surprising considering recent talk that ETH 2.0 could be further delayed. As well, gas prices are still a problem on the OG smart contract chain.
The Never-ending Gas Problem
YTD ETH Gas Prices. Credit: Ycharts.com
Although Ethereum Foundation didn’t promise low gas fees, it didn’t exactly do enough to dispel the narrative that it was going to. The idea was that setting a max would create more cost certainty. Which it did. Users now have a closer estimate of how much gas they need to use to complete a transaction. Problem is, it’s still about the same price as it was.
Look at the YTD chart for gas prices. Outside of some crazy peaks where gas was high as $300 USD, the average appears to be around $150. The current avg price of 89 is below that average. However, gas prices have hit $150 repeatedly since September. Even with a slight downtick in price, transaction prices are too high.
As a result, NFT mania is dormant again after its second go-around in August/September. Smaller traders took advantage of the lower fees during the summer month. But with the prices back up — listing a PFP on OpenSea runs 90 bucks at the moment– a lot of smaller traders are shut out.
Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix in sight. As I mentioned earlier, the timetable for ETH 2.0 — the upgrade that would bring Ethereum to proof of stake — is in flux.
Did The Flippening Already Happen?
Is The Flippening ever gonna happen? It almost did in the last bullrun. But, considering that Bitcoin’s current market cap is 1.2 trillion and Ethereum is just of 500 billion, it’s not looking likely. At least this time around.
Though, you could argue it already happened. Today, in fact.
Flippening happened but only on Binance US
— cobie (@CryptoCobain) October 21, 2021
If you do the math, $8,200 per coin leaves BTC with a market cap of 155 billion, comSo, technically, yes, The Flippening did happen. But only technically. And only on Binance US.
The post Breaking: Ethereum Hits New All-Time High; The Flippening Near? appeared first on CryptosRus.
Text source: CryptosRus
