(Bloomberg) —
Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, soared to a record above $4,400 Friday on bullish sentiment surrounding an upgrade to the Ethereum network and rival Bitcoin’s recent rally to a high of its own.
The digital asset gained as much as 3.5% to $4,403.93, topping the previous record of $4,379.62 in May. The token was around $4,350 at 10:26 a.m. in London trading. Other tokens including Binance Coin and Solana rallied. Ether is now worth more than $510 billion, according to data from CoinGecko.com.
Ether’s latest milestone comes as the digital token has far outperformed Bitcoin throughout this year with a sixfold increase amid surging retail and institutional investor interest in the space.
Ether underpins the affiliated Ethereum Network, the dominant blockchain used for thousands of decentralized applications. The system got a further boost this week after a successful upgrade designed to make it faster and more energy-efficient.
Outstanding futures in Ether soared to $12.5 billion, exceeding the May peak to notch a new record high, Bybt data show. Similar to Bitcoin, funding rates — or the cost of keeping a bullish bet open — have climbed this month on online exchanges. On CME, the futures curve has also steepened in a sign of optimism over the price trajectory.
Read more: Ether Outperforms Rival Cryptos Before Ethereum Network Upgrade
“On-chain activity metrics for Ethereum appear to have found support and are reaching multi-month highs,” said Sean Farrell and Will McEvoy, digital asset strategists with Fundstrat in a report Thursday. Measures including transaction rate, new addresses and active addresses have shown strong growth this month after suffering declines in May, the strategists said.
Bitcoin rose some 40% this month to reach a record of almost $67,000 following the debut of the first Bitcoin-linked exchange-traded fund in the U.S. The world’s biggest digital currency was 0.7% lower in London trading at $60,985.
(Updates prices and adds futures positioning)
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