Ethereum’s price surges above AUD$5,000 as the NFT market booms again
ETHs recent ascent has resulted in the currency recording gains in excess of 50%!
- Ethereum's market dominance index has risen by over 4% (currently at 19.2%) over the last couple of weeks.
- The original Dogecoin meme NFT is currently touted to be worth a whopping AUD$300 million (approx.).
- As per former IMF president Christine Lagarde, stablecoins should not be treated as currencies.
There seems to be no slowing down Ethereum at the moment, with the second-largest cryptocurrency by total market capitalisation currently showcasing weekly gains in excess of 21%. At press time, ETH is trading at AUD$5,130.
As ETH continues to showcase increasing stability around the AUD$5,000 mark, many experts believe that the coming few weeks could see the alt-asset sector, as a whole, make a major financial push. This notion is not farfetched, especially when looking at the recent growth of the NFT market, which largely operates atop the ETH blockchain.
To put things into perspective, earlier today, it came to light that the original Doge meme NFT has now reached a critical mass valuation of a whopping USD$220 million, especially after its successful fractionalised token sale concluded a few days ago. If that wasn't enough, premier auction house Sotheby's recently announced its prediction that its Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT will most likely draw in investor calls of USD$12+ million.
"Stablecoins not currencies but assets," says former IMF president
During an interview at the World Economic Forum recently, Christine Lagarde, former IMF president and current president of the European Central Bank, was quoted as saying that stablecoins should not be labeled as currencies but rather viewed as assets that to need be "regulated" and "supervised", adding:
"Stablecoins are pretending to be a coin, but in fact, it's completely associated with an actual currency. For instance, some of them are saying that they can be used for transactions, but the value will be exactly aligned to the dollar."
Since most stablecoins make use of the ERC-20 token standard and have been designed to run atop the Ethereum network, it will be interesting to see what implications these remarks have on the market.
In closing, it is worth remembering that recently Tether, the company responsible for issuing the USDT stable coin, recently agreed to pay damages worth USD$18.5 million as part of an out of court agreement with the Office of the New York Attorney General, with the latter alleging that Tether had faked its reserves to a certain degree.
Interested in cryptocurrency? Learn more about the basics with our beginner's guide to Bitcoin, dive deeper by learning about Ethereum and see what blockchain can do with our simple guide to DeFi.
Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing
