Ether continued its record-setting rally Sunday, topping $ 4,700 for the first time.
The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, which runs on the Ethereum blockchain, was recently at $ 4,708 on Sunday night, according to Kraken data. Ether ETHUSD, +1.43% has steadily notched a string of all-time highs over the past week and a half, since it topped $ 4,400 for the first time Oct. 28.
Momentum has been swinging higher since a Finder.com report in late October predicted ether’s price would top $ 5,100 by year’s end, based on a poll of fintech experts. The same report predicts ether to top $ 50,000 by 2030.
Furthermore, a number of crypto experts, including crypto hedge-fund manager Rahul Rai, believe ether is on pace to overtake bitcoin as the No. 1 cryptocurrency around the middle of 2022, an event dubbed “the flippening,” Business Insider reported last week.
However, as ether’s price surges, so are transaction fees — BitInfoCharts found the average transaction fee for ether was $ 41.53 as of Saturday, about three to four times what they were in August.
As of Sunday night, ether’s market cap was still about half of bitcoin’s: $ 554.5 billion for ether, to $ 1.226 trillion for bitcoin.
Bitcoin BTCUSD, +3.72%, meanwhile, rallied Sunday as well, last at $ 65,612, according to Coindesk data, about $ 1,300 shy of its all-time high of $ 66,923, set in October. Bitcoin is up about 20% over the past month, and has soared more than 125% year to date.
Ether is up 31% over the past month, and has skyrocketed a whopping 535% in 2021.