The native token of the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem overtops $1000. This is the highest ETH rate since January 2018.

On January 4, the price of ETH exceeded $1000 and reached $1151. The same level was seen last time two years ago in January 2018. Over the past 24 hours, the price of ETH jumped by more than 50%, which was the most powerful weekly gain in ETH since December 2018. From the March low, the coin price has grown 12 fold.

Ethereum capitalization reached $126 billion. According to this indicator, Ethereum entered the top 100 global assets, coming close to the capitalization of such companies as Citigroup, Astrazeneca and Philip Morris.

But ETH is still far away from its all-time high at $1500 reached by ETH during the previous rally in the crypto market in 2017-2018.

The ETH rate began to rise in the fall of 2020 against the backdrop of a general recovery in the cryptocurrency market and after reports of the launch of the zero phase of the Ethereum 2.0 update, which is designed to scale the Ethereum blockchain. On December 1, 2020, phase zero was successfully rolled out to the Ethereum network. Expectations of the launch of Ethereum futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), which may take place in February 2021, if the necessary approvals from American regulators are received, add to the positive sentiment. Messari analyst Ryan Watkins believes that thanks to this, 2021 could be the year of an influx of institutional assets in Ethereum. And co-founder of the Gemini crypto exchange, Tyler Winklevoss, considers the current price of Ethereum to be extremely low even now.

Ethereum became a hot topic of discussion on Twitter. According to the analyst firm The TIE, the number of tweets mentioning ETH set an all-time high against the backdrop of rising cryptocurrency rates. During the day, the number of tweets mentioning ETH doubled and jumped to 41,000.

The rise in the value of Ethereum led to an increase in fees on the Ethereum blockchain. The average commission for transfers on the Ethereum network peaked at $16. The share of commissions in the income of Ethereum miners was 3 times higher than rewards for block mining.