Ethereum Price Hits New Highs After Altair Upgrade Shows Clear Path to Consolidation

The price of Ethereum (ETH) rose to a new all-time high (ATH) today, reaching $4400.97 around 1:02 UTC, according to the ETH/USD price index on Coinbase and Coinmarketcap.

At the time of writing, ETH is currently priced at $4,380, and Ethereum has surged about 46.6% since the beginning of October. The previous ATH was just eight days ago, at $4,308.48 on Oct. 21, according to Coinmarketcap’s price index.

ETH has been on a bullish streak since dropping to around $1,780 on July 21, and has since rallied 147%, reaching a new price discovery point.

Cointelegraph reported yesterday that the Ethereum 2.0 Altair Beacon Chain upgrade has successfully launched, with 98.7% of nodes upgrading at the time. Altair’s successful upgrade to the beacon chain is seen as an important factor in clearing the path to merge with the Ethereum mainnet and transition to the PoS consensus mechanism in Ethereum 2.0.

Ethereum’s success has also been fueled by the platform’s adoption in the burgeoning decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFT space. The future demand for Ethereum will continue to rise, thus providing additional favorable conditions for its bullish outlook in the fourth quarter of 2021 and even 2022.

Ethereum has also undergone important upgrades since July, such as the London hard fork, which introduced a deflationary burn mechanism for Ethereum as part of the network fee structure.

The overall market sentiment for cryptocurrencies has also been positive recently, with the SEC approving multiple Bitcoin futures-based ETFs to launch on the New York Stock Exchange. Following the news, Bitcoin hit an all-time high in price.