The price of Ether has continued to increase in 2017, with the cryptocurrency flirting with U.S. dollar values above $400 as of Monday evening.
Ethereum, a cryptocurrency project established by programmer Vitalik Buterin, has seen a meteoric rise in price in 2017. When Breitbart Tech first covered the project in early January, the price of Ether, the currency attached to Ethereum, held a conversion rate of around $8. This weekend, the price of Ether soared, at least momentarily, past $350. It ultimately settled around $340 by Sunday evening, before rising past the $400 mark on Monday.
Much of the talk in the crypto project space has been about the rapid rise of the prominence of Ethereum, a project established in 2015 as an expansion of the capabilities of blockchain technology. A late May report from CNBC on the rise of Ethereum suggested that the cause of such growth is largely the result of the endorsements that the platform has received over the past few months. Companies including JPMorgan, Microsoft, and Intel are participants in what is called the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, which serves to connect technology companies with the platform.
Jason Hamilton, a Bitcoin Trader, told CNBC that he remains skeptical of Ether’s value, citing investor interest in blockchain technology in general, rather than the Ethereum project itself.
“People are buying a specific blockchain, but the big interests are in the technology. They’ll probably make their own clones and the ether tokens everyone is buying won’t be used for much except trading. Who knows, though,” Hamilton said.
Others retain optimism at Ethereum, as well as other crypto-related projects, largely due to the rapidly evolving nature of the landscape.
A year ago, over 83 percent of ether buying happened with bitcoin, according to data from CryptoCompare, showing that it was mainly crytocurrency enthusiasts interested in it. As of Wednesday, bitcoin accounted for just over 32 percent of trade while fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar and Korean won have risen sharply.
Charles Hayter, CEO of CryptoCompare, claims that this increase in trading between cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies is promising. “Yes the direct fiat flow options are a fleshing out of the Ethereum ecosystem and show its broad appeal,” Hayter said.
Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com
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