The ether virtual currency that runs on the ether platform has once again broken its record high in the last few hours.
In fact, ether has smashed through the $400 (£300) for just the second time since it was released in 2015. It got as high as around $425 (£319) on Thursday, which is the new record high price.
At the time of writing, ether has slipped back ever so slightly to $421. This recent surge was the first time since June that the virtual currency had risen over $400 following a long period of simmering just under this point. The previous record price –set in June – was $414 (£311).
However, a stunning 24 hour spell this week saw ether gain over 16%. This means that it has enjoyed a 5,000% boom in the last year. Naturally, this has led to investors and analysts wondering what exactly had caused it to go on such a big surge.
High Profile Investor Predicted Record Highs
One factor that may have helped was the recent declaration of high profile cryptocurrency investor Mike Novogratz. The former Wall Street hedge fund manager had said back in June that he sold most of his ether when it got to $400, thinking that it would be the highest point in the year.
Of course, he turned out to be right until the last couple of days. However, Novogratz stated earlier this week that it looked as though the virtual currency was “going to put a new high soon”. A couple of days after he had said this his prediction proved to be completely right.
Interestingly, the respected investor suggested that ether was likely to “end the year at close to $500”. This would be £375 and would represent another 25% increase on its current value. He also said that bitcoin would get all the way up to $10,000 (£7,508) before the year ends, citing a lack of trust in financial institutions for this expected price rise in these virtual currencies.
Novogratz based his ethereum prediction on the fact that there are “a lot of positive things happening” in the network. Among these developments was the recent demonstration by Hewlett Packard that showed how they could use the Ethereum code to put an iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner to work on buying electricity to recharge itself.
Another point that appears to shed light on the ether price surge is the fact that it is currently dominating cryptocurrency markets. In fact, a chart that is currently hot news among traders shows that ether now makes up over half of all virtual currency trading.
This information is based on the last few days and shows over half a million trades on the virtual currency, suggesting that there a strong demand for it right now. Ether is currently the second biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, with a total value of over $40 billion now.
In other currencies, bitcoin has had a relatively peaceful few days. However, bitcoin cash has raced up to $1,789 (£1,343). This currency was briefly the second-biggest earlier this month before being passed again by ether.