Ether is finally enjoying an uptrend and as it broke out into a new all-time high at $2,150.

The latest rally in ETH prices came as Bitcoin remained under $60k, sending the altcoins flying. BTC -1.89% Bitcoin / USD BTCUSD $ 57,960.49
-$1,095.45 -1.89% Volume 67.17 b Change -$1,095.45 Open $57,960.49 Circulating 18.68 m Market Cap 1.08 t baseUrl = "https://widgets.cryptocompare.com/"; var scripts = document.getElementsByTagName("script"); var embedder = scripts[scripts.length - 1]; var cccTheme = {"Chart": {"fillColor": "rgba(248,155,35,0.2)", "borderColor": "#F89B23"}}; (function () { var appName = encodeURIComponent(window.location.hostname); if (appName == "") { appName = "local"; } var s = document.createElement("script"); s.type = "text/javascript"; s.async = true; var theUrl = baseUrl + 'serve/v1/coin/chart?fsym=BTC&tsym=USD'; s.src = theUrl + (theUrl.indexOf("?") >= 0 ? "&" : "?") + "app=" + appName; embedder.parentNode.appendChild(s); })(); 25 min Risk-On Sentiment Sends Crypto & Stock Market to New All-Time Highs as Bitcoin Holds the Line 56 min Ethereum Is Generating Over 3-times More Fees Daily Than Bitcoin & 819x than BSC 1 h Total Crypto Market Value Blows Past $2 Trillion & Surpasses the Value of the US Banking System

As a matter of fact, Ethereum is the most used blockchain in the crypto space. At the beginning of this year, it was settling $12 billion in transactions daily, $3 billion more than Bitcoin.

This has been despite the surge in the fees on the network. On March 31st, the daily average fees on Ethereum went to $23, which has currently dropped to $16.

Ethereum is now collecting over $24.6 billion in daily fees, which is about 3.4x more fees than the largest network, $5.6 billion.

This only shows that despite being costly to use, it continues to be the favorite among users. While Binance Smart Chain (BSC) is getting a lot of use recently, it generates less than $30k in fees.

The network fees have been growing since last summer when the popularity of decentralized finance (DeFi) exploded. As of writing, the DeFi market cap has grown to nearly $110 million, and the total value locked (TVL) in the sector has gone past $52 billion.

Now, the popularity of non-fungible tokens (NFT) is also making the network busy. According to Naval Ravikant, the co-founder of AngelList, “With NFTs, blockchains make the jump from finance into creative applications.” NFTs, he said, tokenize all the things and will ultimately “authenticate the world.”

When it comes to network activity, the amount of ETH transferred by smart contracts has risen dramatically since July 2020, likely due to DeFi, at an average of 3-5 million ETH.

The on-chain activity also surged this past week as ETH made new highs. ETH active addresses averaged 611.K per day over the last week, topping 600K for the first time since February, as per Coin Metrics.

On-chain transfer value, denominated in USD, has grown to new peaks the same as median transfer value denominated in ETH, which is yet again likely due to the rise of DeFi. But compared to ETH’s 854K daily transfer count, BTC does about 926K.

Ethereum hash rate grew by 5.2% week-over-week to once again climb to a new ATH.

Institutional interest is another factor fueling Ether prices.

The launch of Ether futures by CME Group has given institutional traders an easy way to gain exposure to the second-largest digital asset and further acting as a DeFi proxy. Earlier last week, Tim McCourt, Managing Director at CME said, the platform has been seeing 767 contracts, equivalent to 38,400 Ether, on average trading each day since its launch on Feb. 8.

Many firms, such as Evolve and Galaxy Digital, are now also launching the Ether ETF and mutual fund.

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