Ether Breaches $3,000 For The First Time In Two Weeks – Can It Regain Its November High?

Ether (ETH) appears to be reviving, as cryptocurrency expert Willy Woo recently tweeted that the cryptocurrency is positioning itself to “break upwards out of a very long term, 3.5-month bearish trend line.”

Ether, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, crossed the $3,000 threshold for the first time since March 8.

With the exception of a brief rise above $3,000 earlier this month and Tuesday’s significant upward move, the token that powers Ethereum’s blockchain has spent the majority of the month trading between the $2,400 to $2,800 zone.

In November of last year, the price of ether in US dollars reached new highs, over $4,800. Similar to Bitcoin (BTC), the price of ETH increased in 2021, but for very different reasons.

Ether Sparked By Tech Advancements

Ethereum, for example, made headlines when a digital art piece was sold for more than 38,000 ETH – or nearly $70 million – as the world’s most expensive NFT.

Unlike Bitcoin, whose price growth was spurred by the initial public offering of the world’s largest crypto exchange Coinbase, ether’s rise was fueled by technological advancements that sparked widespread excitement among traders.

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At publication time, ETH was trading at roughly $3,012 per coin, a nearly 6% rally over the previous 24 hours.

Ether has also broken out in relation to bitcoin, the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency by market capitalization, which is currently up about 4% on the day.

Bitcoin is currently trading at $42,935.85, up 8.4% in the last seven days, according to figures by Coingecko, Tuesday.

ETH total market cap at $360.48 billion on the daily chart | Source: TradingView.com
Whales Active This Week

Coincidentally, whales were also active this week, as their transactions increased across the board.

This was the most substantial increase in their activity since February 24, reaching an all-time high of $8.8 billion in a single day. Indeed, this was shortly before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.

On the contrary, ordinary investors have remained idle as usual, holding 58.21 percent of Ethereum’s 120 million ETH supply. Since the market crisis, their daily volume contribution has been less than 10%.

ETH Outflows Up

Meanwhile, ETH exchange outflows increased significantly on Friday, reaching more than 180,000, according to statistics from IntoTheBlock, a crypto data analytics company.

“The last time this volume of ETH exited exchanges was in October 2021, immediately preceding a 15% price surge within 10 days,” the company tweeted.

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Featured image from NameCoinNews, chart from TradingView.com

Polygon: Ethereum’s Friend Is Looking To Make Big Strides

In a time of many new crypto coins, platforms, and contracts, Polygon is starting to pave a way and rise to the throne of Ethereum layer 2s. Polygon, formerly known as the Matic Network, is a scaling solution that aims to provide multiple tools to improve the speed and reduce the cost and complexities of transactions on blockchain networks.

With recent headlines surrounding both Polygon and correlating Ethereum, it’s wise to get an in-depth perspective on Polygon’s market positioning for those interested in Ethereum alternatives.

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Friend Or Foe, Polygon’s Start & How It Works With ETH…

Here is a dive in to look at the coin once known to the world as MATIC. Polygon was created in India in 2017, and was originally called the Matic Network. It was the brainchild of experienced Ethereum developers—Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, Anurag Arjun, and Mihailo Bjelic.

The Matic Network went live in 2020, and has since attracted some of the top names in the world of decentralized finance, also known as DeFi, including Decentraland and MakerDAO. The Matic Network rebranded to Polygon in February 2021, and in April 2019 during it’s initial offering, the Polygon team raised the equivalent of $5.6 million in ETH with the sale of 1.9 billion MATIC tokens over a brisk 20-day period. While some coins in the same field are aiming at top dog coin Ethereum, Polygon is aiming with them to help bring a new speed and software to the world.

MATIC/POLYGON Is currently trading around $1.83 | MATIC-USD on TradingView.com

 

In recent times, many coins have been deemed “the Ethereum killer,” while Polygon is arguably helping with the blockchain champ. At the core of the network is the Polygon software development kit (SDK), used to build Ethereum-compatible decentralized applications as side-chains and connect them to its main blockchain. While Ethereum recently reached an all time high, finally breaking the $4K mark and showing skeptics that it’s here to stay, many are left asking: could this be a future effect for Polygon as DeFi grows? Polygon has added some excellent partners to its list, and given the chains supplementary nature to Ethereum, many have sought investing in both.

Once the the rebranding was done, Polygon retained its MATIC cryptocurrency ticker – the digital coin underpinning the network. MATIC is used as the unit of payment and settlement between participants who interact within the network. Polygon’s main chain is a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) sidechain, in which network participants can stake MATIC tokens to validate transactions and vote on network upgrades. This coin is showing it has strong potential, particularly for projects around DeFi that are looking for friendlier attributes relative to Ethereum (gas fees being the most notable attribute).

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