Ethereum Regains $3,000 in ‘Incredibly Bullish’ Momentum in Bitcoin Record

Ethereum has struggled to gain much momentum in recent months as bitcoin has soared, breaking its all-time price record set in early November multiple times, including once on Friday afternoon.

However, the second-largest crypto by market cap finally breached the $3,000 threshold early Saturday for the first time since August 2, reaching $3,056.

Breaking this mark for only the second time this year, Ethereum fell to $2,375 on the eve of Election Day.

However, with President-elect Donald Trump's dovish stance on digital assets boosting the broader market, Ethereum's price has begun to rise on that tailwind, popping 20% ​​in the past week and outpacing Bitcoin's own 10% jump.

Bitcoin continues to push to new all-time highs, again hitting a new high of $77.23 on Friday, according to data from CoinGecko.

Bitcoin's all-time high of $73,737 in March fell on Tuesday night as Trump's victory began to appear unexpectedly in key battleground states, including Pennsylvania.

Even before the election, the push for the world's biggest fortune was already gaining ground.

Investors have allocated billions of dollars to diversify into Bitcoin ETFs this year as Bitcoin's market dominance against Ethereum rose to a three-year high last month.

Although Ethereum's decentralized finance (DeFi) applications are a pillar of the industry's sprawling landscape, heavyweights like Uniswap have faced enforcement threats from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this year, contributing to a sense of regulatory uncertainty.

However, this may change.

With a change in leadership at the SEC under Trump's leadership to be sure, Ethereum's prospects could change as regulators adopt a more cooperative approach. There are signs that Ethereum's proximity to DeFi may be changing, with related tokens showing gains.

Aave Management, a decentralized crypto-lending platform, saw its price increase 29% to $183 last week.

At the same time, the management token for Athena, a decentralized stable coin protocol, has grown by 34% to $0.50 in the same period.

“This transition to a management narrative that signals that they want to address regulatory enforcement measures on a platform like Ethereum is probably more important for Ethereum than for other projects like Bitcoin,” Kraken's head of strategy, Thomas Perfumo, told Decrypt last week.

While Ethereum's recent climb above $3,000 was bolstered by Trump's win, the asset still underperformed bitcoin in terms of year-to-date gains.

Bitcoin may have hit a new all-time high on Friday, but Ethereum is still chasing the November 2021 peak of $4,878.

It came within striking distance of its previous all-time high when it crossed $4,000 for a single day in March.

However, the approval of the spot Ethereum ETF was seen in March following the news that the Ethereum Foundation was being investigated by an unnamed “government official”.

The authority was found to be the SEC, which ended the investigation after three months, according to Ethereum software company Consensus.

(Disclosure: Consensys is one of 22 investors in Decrypt.)

In May, the regulator approved spot Ethereum ETFs, confirming the asset's regulatory status as a commodity.

Although the development was seen as bullish for Ethereum, outflows from the grayscale Ethereum Trust dampened enthusiasm for the ETF's launch in July, putting downward pressure on the asset's price.

Spot Ethereum ETFs lacked early momentum, but momentum has changed since Trump won. According to CoinGlass, the product segment took in $80 million on Thursday, representing their third-best revenue stream since launch.

More recently, there has been a growing debate around Denkun, an Ethereum update earlier this year that introduced layer-2 networks with a dedicated space for posting transactions.

While the upgrade has made the Layer-2 networks cheaper, some think that Ethereum may be worse off, as the overall supply of Ethereum has again become inflating and the overall payment revenue has decreased.

Still, that didn't stop traders from speculating about further profits.

Nick Forster, co-founder of the onchain options DeFi protocol Derive, told Decrypt last week: “The market retains strong bullishness.

For Bitcoin, options traders are showing a bit more optimism, with a slight positive bias for both the 30-day and 7-day views, Forster added. Ethereum, which is often seen as risky, is shining a stronger optimism for similar times.

That represents a “remarkable bullish reversal” for Ethereum, he said.

Edited by Andrew Hayward and Sebastian Sinclair