After a month of lacklustre performance versus bitcoin (BTC) and a protracted period of diminishing interest in decentralised finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens, the price of Ethereum (ETH) and most other cryptoassets rose today (NFTs).
ETH was trading at USD 2,750 on Wednesday March 2, up 6.9% in the last 24 hours and down 7.6% in the last seven days.
Despite the fact that today’s surge was well received by ETH investors, the currency was far from the greatest performer in the market, with BTC up 8.7% and top performer terra (LUNA) up more than 21% in the same 24 hours. The recent improvements for ETH come after a protracted period of underperformance against BTC, with the ETH/BTC trading pair being down around 26% from a peak of BTC 0.088 per ETH in December last year. At the time of publication, ETH 1 was trading for BTC 0.065 on Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange. The rise in the price of ETH coincides with the lowest charge for transmitting transactions through the Ethereum network since August 2021.
The average transaction cost on Ethereum was USD 10.28 as of Tuesday this week. According to BitInfoCharts, this compares to a high of USD 52.46 set in January and an all-time high of USD 69.92 set in May 2021. The recent improvements for ETH come after a protracted period of underperformance against BTC, with the ETH/BTC trading pair being down around 26% from a peak of BTC 0.088 per ETH in December last year. At the time of publication, ETH 1 was trading for BTC 0.065 on Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange. The rise in the price of ETH coincides with the lowest charge for transmitting transactions through the Ethereum network since August 2021.
The average transaction cost on Ethereum was USD 10.28 as of Tuesday this week. According to BitInfoCharts, this compares to a high of USD 52.46 set in January and an all-time high of USD 69.92 set in May 2021. The decrease in NFT activity is accompanied by a dip in interest in another crucial area for Ethereum: decentralized finance.According to DeFi Pulse statistics, the total value locked (TVL) in Ethereum-based DeFi protocols has decreased dramatically since the end of last year, when TVL hit an all-time high of USD 110.72 billion. That sum has dropped to USD 76.18 billion as of today Notably, the drop is also seen when measured in ETH. The TVL has dropped from an all-time high of ETH 11m on April 20 last year to ETH 8.18m, according to the statistics.
Goldman to refer clients to ETH fund
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs, the investment banking behemoth, said Wednesday that customers interested in ETH exposure would be able to invest in the Galaxy Institutional Ethereum Fund. According to the fund’s information page, the fund, which is managed by Mike Novogratz’s business Galaxy Digital, invests directly in ETH and is only accessible to authorized investors.Goldman Sachs would get a “introduction fee” for every clients it introduces to Galaxy’s fund, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It’s unknown how much money has already been sent to the fund via Goldman Sachs.
