Ethereum hit a new all-time high price on Friday, breaking a nearly four-year record following recent gains fueled by surging ETH treasuries, an increasingly favorable regulatory environment for the protocol, and growing interest from traditional finance firms.
The second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap is up 15% over the past 24 hours to $4,879, surpassing its previous record of $4,878 set in November 2021, data from CoinGecko shows.
ETH has more than doubled in price over the last two months to outpace even Bitcoin as investors flood into the exchange-traded funds. After coming close to a new record on August 14, the price of ETH dipped alongside the rest of the market, dropping to under $4,100 earlier this week.
But on Friday, crypto prices broadly surged following Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s comments, which appeared to suggest potential for an interest rate cut ahead. Ethereum jumped by nearly 8% in an hour after the comments, and continued to tick up afterwards.
“It’s finally ETH’s moment to shine: record ETH ETF inflows and the launch of large ETH digital asset treasuries, coupled with broader ecosystem success — Circle and Bullish IPOs, and Trump’s executive order allowing digital assets in 401(k)s,” Brian Huang, co-founder of on-chain automation platform Glider, wrote in an email to Decrypt. “Jerome Powell’s dovish speech today hinting a rate cuts was the final push ETH needed.”
Huang added: “Sentiment in the trenches for ETH is strong as well. Layer-2s like Base continue to grow, and ETH still bodes the most DeFi liquidity by a factor of 9x above the second, Solana. We’re still in the early innings here for ETH, the world’s global settlement layer.”
The recent Ethereum boom has been fueled in part by growing ETF demand. Last week, U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs collected over $1 billion in inflows in a single day for the first time since they started trading in July 2024. And Ethereum funds have been outpacing Bitcoin ETFs with gains, though conversely, they’ve also bled out faster on down days.
The gains have dovetailed with rise of companies that have gobbled up Ethereum as their primary mission. In recent weeks, Bitcoin miner BitMine Immersion has grown its holdings to more than $7 billion, while SharpLink Gaming, which pivoted from online marketing, has accumulated more than $3.5 billion worth of the coin.
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Such companies are following in the footsteps of Bitcoin treasury company Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), which started buying the largest cryptocurrency by market cap in 2020 to pump its stock. The move has inspired dozens of followers, who have started expanding into other assets like Ethereum, Solana, and BNB.
