Ether surged Thursday, surpassing $2,000 for the first time since April, as BlackRock took initial steps toward submitting an application for an ether ETF. Trading at $2,047.10, the cryptocurrency had surged by nearly 8% while bitcoin prices, which were up by more than 4% at $37,210.75, hit their highest point since May 2022. Thursday's Delaware Division of Corporations filing for the iShares Ethereum Trust was a precursor to BlackRock's filing for a bitcoin ETF, which was revealed a week earlier. Crypto prices were further buoyed in the morning by bitcoin's rise which triggered a wave of short liquidation that gave the digital assets market an overall boost, according to Clara Medalie, head of research at Kaiko.
For the past 12 months, crypto markets have been struggling to find a spark amid the negative news, making the possibility of an ETF approval a welcomed relief. It is too soon to determine if the recent surge has any lasting power, however the signs are positive. Thursday saw large advances in other crypto assets and bitcoin-related equities when bitcoin's price exceeded $37,000 for the first time in over a year. Solana had the biggest gain of the day with an 11% rise, while Cardano and Polygon tokens rose 4% and 3%, respectively. Furthermore, according to Vertex Protocol co-founder Darius Tabatabai, when bitcoin climbs, other altcoins tend to follow shortly after. This trend was evident Thursday, as shares of Coinbase rose 11%, Microstrategy 9%, Marathon Digital 18%, Riot 10%, CleanSpark 10% and Iris Energy 4%. With bitcoin up over 120% year-to-date, it seems likely that these gains will continue.
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