Ethereum prices hit another all-time high of $2,800 in late trading on April 29 according to Tradingview. It has built upon a move that has added 14% to ETH prices since the same time last Friday.
According to Santiment, the gap between the two assets in terms of market share is now tighter than ever.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s market share had fallen to 49.37% according to Tradingview. The last time it dropped below 50% was in July 2018, as reported by CryptoPotato.
Ethereum’s market share is currently 15.60% but that is not as high as it was during the January 2018 altcoin boom which pushed it up to 23%. At the time several altcoins such as XRP and LTC were also performing well and commanding a solid share of the overall crypto market.
The market capitalization for Ethereum is currently a touch below $320 billion which, according to Companiesmarketcap.com, has now surpassed that of PayPal which has $314 billion.
A number of bullish factors have been driving momentum for Ethereum recently as highlighted in a recent note to investors by Wall Street banking giant JPMorgan.
Crypto blogger and YouTuber Lark Davis commented that Ethereum’s future economics model will make it extremely efficient at earning a passive income.
“The more I think about it, the more I feel like I may never sell my #ethereum. It is going to be a deflationary asset with 5% annual rewards, ETH at 10k will be a passive income beast!”
There are several key upgrades approaching for Ethereum following the Berlin upgrade which went live earlier this month.
The London upgrade is expected in July and this will include the highly anticipated EIP-1559 which will introduce a mechanism to adjust the current auction process that determines transaction prices. This should have the effect of dynamically adjusting fees so that users pay the lowest bid for the block, but may not necessarily lower gas prices if the network is still under heavy load.
The mechanism will also burn some of the fees which will make Ethereum deflationary, even more so when the network switches to proof of stake during Phase 1.5 of the ETH 2.0 upgrade.
This has all added weight to its property as ‘the currency of the internet’, as both institutions and retail investors have been loading up, even at these record-breaking prices.