The price of Ethereum, the leading alternative cryptocurrency, or altcoin, has gone up 12.72% in the past 24 hours and was trading at $710 this morning, EST, according to TradingView data.

What Happened

Ethereum, or ETH, launched in 2013, has been the second leading cryptocurrency, in terms of market capitalization, after Bitcoin for years now. Many crypto experts argue that the blockchain technology behind ETH is better than Bitcoin’s and makes a better case for its usage.

The current Ethereum capitalization is $80 billion, while Bitcoin’s capitalization is $499.5 billion, as of publication time.

Image by Peter Patel from Pixabay. 

This is the highest price Ethereum has reached since January 2018, when it hit an all-time high of $1,432.

Why It Matters

The major digital currency, Bitcoin, has had its best month in history, crossing the $20,000 mark for the first time on Dec. 16 and growing to $26,000 in just two weeks. 

It was trading at $26724 at the time of this article's publication.