Ether Hits $1,000 for First Time Since 2018, Hours After Crossing $800

Taking a page out of larger sibling bitcoin's book, the price of ether (ETH) on Sunday traded above $1,000 for the first time since January 2018, hours after breaking through $800 for the first time since March that same year..

The native currency of the Ethereum network hit a nearly three-year high of $1,002.81 before falling back a bit to $995.57, up 29.4% over the last 24 hours..
The second-highest cryptocurrency by market cap, the total value of ether is currently $114.2 billion.
Ether's move coincides with growing institutional interest in the cryptocurrency and the upcoming launch of ETH futures on the CME on Feb. 8.
Also, ether is almost certainly getting a lift from the eye-popping price run of bitcoin over the last 24 hours.
Though not as dramatic as bitcoin's surge, the rise in the price of ether is accelerating. After breaking $600 for the first time since May 2018 in November 2020, it broke $700 for the first time since that same month in 2018 on Dec. 27, 2020, and has now notched $800 and $900 in the same morning.
While bitcoin's surge to start the new year was one for the books, its rise has stalled in recent hours and ether has risen dramatically against the leading cryptocurrency during that time. The price of one ether in bitcoin terms is now close to 0.03, the highest it has been in nearly a month. Earlier on Sunday, it was just 0.02309 on Coinbase. That’s a rally of about 30% in just 15 hours.

Ether volumes on the eight exchanges tracked by the CoinDesk 20 have been substantially higher over the past month. As of Saturday, the seven-day average of total volume for ether trades on those exchanges was $3.3 billion, according to data from CryptoCompare. One month prior, it was $1.5 billion.

UPDATE (Jan. 3, 14:30 UTC): Updates that the price ether had topped $900.
UPDATE (Jan. 3, 16:30 UTC): Updates with coin activity, new all-time high.
UPDATE (Jan. 3, 23:44 UTC): Updates with new all-time high, information on volume, performance vs. bitcoin.

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