Ethereum(ETH) Price Breaks $1,600; ETH Futures Open Interest at an All time High

Ethereum (ETH) price broke past key resistance of $1,600 after breaking the previous ATH of $1543 earlier today. The altcoin has now gone into a price discovery mode with little to no resistance in sight. With the CME Futures debut on February 8th, ETH can easily breach the past $2,000 mark in the coming weeks.

The recent price surge is being attributed to rising institutional interest as evident from the recent Grayscale purchase of 25k ETH for its Ethereum trust. The open interest for Ethereum also hit a new all-time-high volume of $5.6 billion rising by a whopping 47% over the past 24 hours.

Ethereum Could Rise in Similar Magnitude to Bitcoin

The bitcoin bull run that started toward the end of October 2020 seeing the top cryptocurrency more than double its 2017 high as its price touched $42,000 on many exchanges before retracting to sub $35k levels. After breaking the previous ATH, bitcoin price charted into price discovery mode gaining nearly $28,000 in a mere 28 days. Many trade pundits believe Eth could mimic a similar price action post its ATH breach.

Despite bitcoin grabbing most of the limelight toward the last quarter of 2020, Ethereum managed to give better YTD returns than Bitcoin and that trend might continue in 2022 as well. Recently a Fundstrat analyst predicted a $10,000 price value for Ether owing to its surging institutional demand, rising defi market, and upcoming Proof of Stake network ETH 2.0.

The price valuation of $10,000 is being projected based on the fact that ETH supply would see a massive cut in the market as more traders stake their Ether in the new ETH 2.0 network which has already received over a million Ether in their staking pools.

The launch of the CME Futures contract next week is also a key catalyst behind the price surge as was the case with Bitcoin. The influx of institutions would see a spike in demand while the market supply would take a hit fueling its price further.