While you’ve watched bitcoin’s blistering rally, other cryptocurrencies are having a moment.
Ether, the Ethereum blockchain’s digital token, climbed past $ 1,000 on Monday, hitting its all-time high since February 2, 2018. Ether last traded at $ 1,038, up 30% in the past 24 hours, according to data from crypto news website CoinDesk.
It comes after bitcoin hit a new all-time high, just above $ 34,000. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value rose to $ 34,452 early Sunday, before falling to around $ 31,780 on Monday.
Even XRP, the virtual currency associated with controversial blockchain start-up Ripple, rose Monday. XRP was up about 7% in the past 24 hours, trading at around 23 cents.
It’s still worth less than half of what it was about two weeks ago, when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint against Ripple, claiming that the company had made an unregistered securities offering with XRP.
Meanwhile, Litecoin was more than 10% higher on Monday to around $ 155. Litecoin was created by crypto entrepreneur Charles Lee with the intention of processing transactions faster than bitcoin’s underlying blockchain network.
Alternatives to bitcoin, also known as “altcoins” in the cryptocurrency industry, often gain momentum for bitcoin at times. Many altcoins won after bitcoin approached $ 20,000 in 2017, amid increased interest from private investors in the space.
“The super-exponential pace of earnings is impressive, but it carries the risk of very sharp corrections when they finally arrive,” John Hardy, Saxo Bank’s chief FX strategy, said in a note Monday.
Ether was within reach of a record high of over $ 1,400, which it hit in mid-January 2018. The cryptocurrency’s network recently started with a major upgrade called Ethereum 2.0, which is expected to make it faster and more secure.
Bullish crypto investors believe that Ethereum could become the blueprint for a next-generation decentralized internet as it supports apps on its network. A big theme in 2020 was the emergence of decentralized financing, or DeFi, which aims to replicate traditional financial products such as loans without intermediaries such as the banks.
Bitcoin saw a historic rally last year when it rose more than 300%. The virtual currency started in 2009 and has come a long way from its anti-establishment roots in the wake of the financial crisis, given its adoption by major companies such as PayPal and Fidelity and increased interest from institutional investors.