Ethereum Spikes 13% to $711, Highest Price since 2018

Editor's note: this piece has been updated to include Ethereum's current all-time high. 

Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, today hit highs of $711, according to data from metrics site CoinMarketCap.

Ethereum jumped from $633 at 1pm UTC today to its current prices just a few hours later. The increase marks an increase of 13% in the past 24 hours. This is Ethereum's highest price since May 2018.

Ethereum's market cap is now $79.8 billion. 

Ethereum's jump follows Bitcoin's. Bitcoin today hit highs of $28,500, about $9,000 higher than Bitcoin's price in 2017, and about $4,000 higher than prices observed just two days ago. Bitcoin's market cap is now over $500 billion, even though the price crashed to the mid $27,000s later on today.

However, unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum has not hit an all-time high this bull run. Its peak, $1,432.88, occurred in 2018.

Much attention was given to Ethereum this past summer when it cocooned a 15 billion dollar industry, decentralized finance. The term refers to non-custodial lending protocols, exchanges, and synthetic assets. Some of the protocols offered annual yields of several thousand percent, although many have since collapsed.