After spending two days mostly at around $900, ether went on a rally Wednesday, and hit its latest milestone of $1,000 early Thursday morning, according to data from CoinDesk's Ethereum Price Chart (EPI).
With this achievement, the cryptocurrency has reclaimed its place as the second-largest blockchain by total value, after Bitcoin, only days after being temporarily surpassed by Ripple's XRP token. However, similar to Bitcoin, the rapid increase in price is met with controversial market move, including from investors.
“Bitcoin is the first application built on the blockchain technology,” said Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin. “Ether can be a more programmable money. We conceive it as a crypto fuel because it powers these programs on the world computer.”
Previously, ether was having a wave of technical problems that went so big to cause the cryptocurrency to be taken off a major exchange the weekend.
Speaking to CoinDesk, ethereum developer Nick Johnson explained that the problem was due to a glitch in ethereum's internal, automatic gas pricing function.
With its price reaching record high, banking giants have been increasingly looked into Ethereum for another set of solutions, besides Bitcoin.
In mid-December 2017, a group of financial companies that include UBS, Credit Suisse, and Barclays, announced plans to test the Ethereum blockchain in the hopes of making it easier to meet new European Union reporting standards under the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II.
Thursday also saw the overall cryptocurrency market capitalization to jump past $770 billion, marking new highs just weeks after a correction saw a drop to $418 billion.
On the day, Bitcoin's price was down, having dropped from its week's high of $15,393, according to CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index (BPI). Bitcoin has mostly been steady with prices varying around $13,000 to $14,000 range interrupted briefly with a drop to nearly $12,000 on December 30th.
Bitcoin's dominance in the cryptocurrency market capitalization remains around 33 percent, having dropped from 43 percent over the previous week.
