Ethereum reached the highest rate until now

Bitcoin always have big swings it gained and lost over $5 000 in just a few days, but Ethereum was quite flat in last few weeks, until now.

This morning has been lively, particularly for Litecoin and Ethereum, both reached the highest rate until now.  For the past three weeks, Ethereum had been stuck around $460 with only marginal gains.  At around 12.00 a.m CET things started to change for the crypto asset as it broke through resistance levels and headed upwards up and over the psychological $500 level.

According to CoinMarketCap, the skyward surge continued and ETH reached an all-time high of $553 four hours later. This represents a jump of around 17% in just a few hours. A slight correction pulled prices back down to around $530 but it has since regained momentum.

CRYPTO MARKET CAP

Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap. ETH jumped from $46 billion yesterday to around $51 billion today. CoinMarketCap’s data indicated that Coinbase owned GDAX was responsible for the most transactions, $287 million – around 11% of the total – in the past 24 hours. The second most popular exchange for Ethereum was Bitfinex with 9.5% of the trade, followed by South Korea’s Bithumb running 7.5% of the transactions.

The total amount of Ethereum shifted over the past 24 hours was $2.6 billion at the time of writing. The last time ETH broke $500 was very briefly during the CryptoKitties craze that swept the internet at the end of November. The network became bogged down by digital cats and transactions ground to a halt. Prices dropped back to around $450 where they have remained up until yesterday.

BANKS BACK BLOCKCHAIN

The latest surge has likely come off the back of news that the global banking industry is showing an interest in Ethereum based smart contracts. News reports revealed that Barclays, Credit Suisse, KBC, SIX, Thomson Reuters, and UBS are seeking to automate Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) II requirements with the assistance from smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. By doing so enables large financial institutions to meet more stringent regulations and directives on a common platform.

At the time of writing Ethereum was worth around $570.