On Thursday, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Ethereum (ETH), escalated to an all-time high of $2,641. Following the largely unforeseen hike, a sharp adjustment soon dragged the price down, correcting it to $2,100.
Ethereum and the Crypto-Market
Currently, Ethereum is trading at $2,275 with a 24-hour trading volume of $33.5 billion and a market cap of $263 billion.
Even in its short span, the sudden rise affected the overall crypto market enormously. Triggered by positions of over-leveraged traders, a massive sell-off led to tremendous liquidations across some cryptocurrency exchanges. CoinMarketCap’s data reveal the value of the overall crypto-market dropped by more than $250 billion, forcing the total market capitalization to around $1.85 trillion.
Sell Off Earning Record Gains
Amid this heavy sell-off, several traders made record gains. One such trade, discussed in many of the emerging reports, was the sale of 20,000 ETH on Coinbase that earned the trader $46 million within just four minutes.
Uninterrupted, Largely Bullish Momentum
Despite Ethereum’s retracement in price, market proponents on the digital asset remained bullish. The network’s on-chain fundamentals were largely optimistic. The cryptocurrency witnessed high levels of outflows from several exchanges, and even the number of addresses holding Ethereum reached an all-time high.
The year 2021, so far, seems highly favorable for the growth of digital assets. In the first quarter itself, the network settled transactions worth $1.5 trillion, which essentially exceeds its overall transactions settled in 2020.