Ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain now trades above the $4,000 trading zone, for the first time since the May 2021 market crash that saw the price of Ether lose over 50% of its value.
The altcoin market has been rallying over the past month with the market capitalization gaining approximately 71% from approximately $777 billion a month ago to now stand at $1.34 trillion as of the time of writing this report. Many cryptocurrencies including top-ranked cryptocurrencies like ADA, BNB and XRP have all posted double-digit gains.
In the last month, Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization that currently stands at $467 billion has rallied over 53% in the last month, from $2,600 as of August 2nd to currently trade $4,022, gaining its momentum from the lunch of its London hard fork upgrade which adds a deflationary feature to the Ethereum blockchain.
Since the launch of the upgrade just last week, the network has burned over 181,660 ETH which at the current price of Ether approximates to $726 million, with NFT platform OpenSea, Ether transfers and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platform, Uniswap accounting for the top 3 contributors to the burned tokens. The 3 accounts for 54,936 ETH burned as of the time of writing this report represents approximately 30% of the burned tokens.
Ethereum is growing at an astronomical rate as the network is currently moving from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism. This upgrade is expected to happen before the end of the year.
Ether’s current market capitalization makes it more valuable than well-established companies such as Samsung with a market capitalization of $403 billion, Johnson & Johnson with a market capitalization of $460 billion, Walmart with a market capitalization $416 billion, Bank of America with a market capitalization $345 billion, PayPal with a market capitalization $335 billion and MasterCard with a market capitalization of $334 billion.
