Ethereum price rockets to all-time-high as ‘meme coins’ also surge

The world’s second largest cryptocurrency has rocketed to an all-time-high, following crypto top dog bitcoin’s assent to its highest ever peak last week.

Ether, which underpins the ethereum blockchain network, is up 10.3 per cent versus the US dollar to $4,332 since Thursday morning and 9.9 per cent against sterling to £3,143.

The price of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, bitcoin, also bounced back above $60,000 yesterday, after Wednesday’s flash crash saw hundreds of billions of dollars wiped off the value of the crypto market.

Despite Wednesday’s drawdown, cryptocurrency markets have rallied sharply in re-cent weeks, and ether is up over 60 per cent since its late September trough.

Bitcoin hit its record high of $67,016 on 20 October and has risen by roughly 50 per cent since late September.

Among the biggest recent movers in cryptocurrencies however, is so-called ‘meme coin’ shiba inu, the price of which has rocketed by around 160 per cent this week to become the world’s eighth largest token.

A spinoff of dogecoin, which itself was born as a meme coin in 2013, shiba inu has risen by around 750,000 per cent since January.

Meme coins are typically referred to as such because they serve little or no practical use, while more established cryptocurrencies either provide a new payment option or access to exclusive incentives – such is the case with ether and ethereum.

Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments said: ‘It seems driven by fad buyers hoping to get in now and flip later to what will need to be a new series of buyers at even higher prices.

‘This makes it closer to a collectible market than a currency market, and as such de-termining value with traditional analysis seems impossible.’