Ethereum price shoots up 5% and leaps past $200

Ethereum (ETH) has pumped 5.5% in the last day to retake the $210 mark—continuing a two-month-long bullish break.

Despite hovering around the $200 price point for the better part of a week, Ethereum has now confidently broken through the $200 resistance zone and is now trading at $212.34. The cryptocurrency has recovered much of the value it lost following a sharp drop between the May 9 and 10—during which it fell from a peak of $214 down to $184.

Ethereum is now up 14% in the last week and 13.2% in the last month when measured against the US dollar (USD), or up four percent in the last day but -15% in the last month against Bitcoin (BTC). One Ethereum is now worth 0.0219 BTC—down from 0.0243 BTC/ETH this time last month.

This bullish momentum comes following suggestions that the testnet (a testing network for experimental new features) for the upcoming Serenity upgrade could go live as early as June.

The upgrade, frequently dubbed "Ethereum 2.0," is expected to be the largest in the history of Ethereum and will introduce several key changes to how the network works—including a gradual shift to an alternate consensus system known as Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and the launch of an updated version of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Overall, the update is designed to resolve some of Ethereum's most pressing issues—such as bloat and poor scaling—while also expanding its capabilities.

Overall, Ethereum is the best performing cryptocurrency in the top ten by market capitalization—edging out the 5.2% gains seen by Bitcoin SV (BSV) and the 3.4% seen by Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Bitcoin, on the other hand, is up just 1.5% today.