ETH/USD: Ethereum Outperforms Bitcoin for the Week with Prices Up 8% to $4,000

Second-biggest coin almost broke out to a fresh 2024 high. Profit-taking and consolidation led to a broad-based retreat in crypto markets.

• Ethereum ETHUSD was chugging along the $4,000 level to kick off this week’s trading with crypto bros feeling hopeful about future prospects. So much so that they actually pushed its increase before Bitcoin last week — Ether outperformed the king of coins with an 8% weekly gain against a 3% increase for the orange crypto. Ethereum is now floating just below its 2024 high of $4,100 hit in March. But it’s nowhere near its record yet.
• In 2021, Ether peaked at an all-time high of about $4,900 a piece — a milestone traders hope to revisit in the current red-hot rally. But the second-largest coin has been lagging on the year. Compared to Bitcoin’s 130% gains since early January, Ether boasts an increase of roughly 80%. It’s largely because the focus of the current surge is the incoming White House administration with Donald Trump promising a ton of stuff for Bitcoin.
• Perhaps the biggest of them all, a Bitcoin strategic reserve that will send the US government on a Bitcoin buying spree to the tune of 1 million tokens across 5 years. Ether, on the other hand, is seen more as a technical player in the crypto space, one that’s used to breathe life into decentralized applications (dApps) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Still, a broad-based retreat over the weekend saw major tokens pull slightly back from last week’s highs.