On Thursday, the price of Ether (ETH) hit an all-time high, surging to over $2,800. Meanwhile, Bitcoin saw a major price drop last week, before rebounding and settling in the mid-50,000 range.
Together with Bitcoin, many other cryptocurrencies have been plummeting in recent times, but not Ether. In fact, ever since Ethereum-based NFTs started gaining tracking, so did the price of Ether.
Its most recent price surge came after the news that the European Investment Bank (EIB) issued its first digital bond based on the Ethereum platform. Crypto investors understood this move as a nod from mainstream financial institutions that the currency is going to get more widely accepted in the future.
The reason why the latest move of the European Investment Bank is so important for the crypto world is that this organization is basically the lending arm of the European Union.
On Wednesday, the organization announced that it had used the Ethereum platform to issue €100 million in digital notes, which accounts for about $121 million.
Three major financial institutions took part in the process, namely Societe Generale AG, Banco Santander SA, and Goldman Sachs. The three serves as joint managers for the digital notes.
The notes in question are series of bond tokens created on blockchain, which is based on the Ethereum platform.
This isn’t the first time that major banks have used this platform, but it’s certainly the biggest players to get on the crypto bandwagon in Europe.
In Asia, several banks ventured into the business of blockchain bond issuance last year. For instance, last September the Bank of Thailand launched its own blockchain platform with the intention of insuring government bonds.
Two months later, something similar happened in China. The China Construction Bank (CCB) used blockchain technology for the insurance of debt securities worth about $3 billion.
Ether remains the world’s second most popular cryptocurrency. It’s still significantly behind Bitcoin both in terms of market capitalization and price.
Furthermore, over the last couple of months, we’ve seen some major institutional investments made in Bitcoin. The same hasn’t been the case with Ether, at least not in the same magnitude.
However, it’s been a different story when it comes to the Ethereum platform, on which the Ether cryptocurrency is based. The platform is finding use in numerous projects, most notably the non-fungible tokens (NFT).
How it works is that the platform is used to ensure digital certificates that cannot be altered in any way, which makes it easy for digital artists to protect their work from pirating.
The NFT’s have started getting attention fairly recently, which coincides with the surge of the Ether price. Whether the emergence of NFTs can propel Ethereum to crypto stardom remains to be seen.
Still, there’s one thing that all crypto experts seem to agree on – Ether is way less volatile than Bitcoin, which makes it a better option for long-term investing.
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