ETH Price 2-Week High, Amid Protocol Upgrades and BTC Stability
The second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap rose above $2,350 on Sunday, its highest reading since June 18. Bitcoin price sideways movement and anticipation of major protocol upgrades are fueling investors’ appetite for ETH.
Ether’s (ETH) $230 million options expiry on Friday might have shifted market sentiment in favor of the bulls, at least for now, as investors remain cautiously optimistic about the upcoming London hard fork and the prospect that Bitcoin (BTC) has established a firm bottom.
ETH Price
ETH rose more than 6.5% to $2,370 on Sunday, the highest in over two weeks, according to Cointelegraph Markets Pro. Weekend trade volumes remained characteristically low at just over $18 billion.
Ether’s price sees renewed upside on Sunday. Source: Cointelegraph Markets Pro
At current values, ETH has a total market capitalization of $274.8 billion.
The DeFi market, which is largely built on top of Ethereum, saw cumulative gains of 9% on Sunday. The total market value of DeFi coins is $67.3 billion, according to Coingecko data.
Bitcoin’s price crossed $35,600, having gained 2.6%. BTC trading $34,445 at time of writing
The battle between the bulls and the bears was on display in the options market last month, with both sides expecting extreme price fluctuations for Ether leading into the options expiry on Friday. $2,200 price level is where the bulls start to increase their lead, as evidenced by the ratio of call options to put options.
London hard fork to spike ETH value?
Ethereum’s London hard fork, which contains the highly anticipated EIP 1559, launched on the Ropsten testnet on June 24, setting the stage for full mainnet implementation later in July.
The hard fork is anticipated to have a positive impact on Ether’s value thanks to several proposal upgrades, including the transition to the eco-friendly proof-of-stake consensus and a new “scarcity” feature that will reduce the number of tokens in circulation.
Analysts expect investors to increase their exposure to ETH leading into the hard fork. On-chain data suggests this is already happening as Ethereum registered over 750,000 active addresses last week, exceeding Bitcoin by a considerable margin.
Analytics firm Santiment, which provided the data, described the active-address flippening as “historic.”
