Ethereum Crosses $3,000 Mark For First Time Ever, Valued Higher Than Disney

Ethereum (ETH), the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, has surpassed the psychologically crucial $3,000 mark as of press time late Sunday for the first time in its nearly six years of history.

What Happened: The cryptocurrency backing the namesake blockchain platform has risen 2.7% over 24 hours to $3,021.67 at press time, giving it a market valuation of $349.4 billion.

This market capitalization puts Ethereum ahead of companies like The Walt Disney Company DIS, and PayPal Technologies Inc. PYPL.

Disney has a market valuation of $337.68 billion and PayPal has a market valuation of $308 billion, as per Friday’s close.

Ethereum is now hovering around Bank of America Corp BAC, which has a market valuation of $349.66 billion.

See Also: Is Ethereum a Good Investment?

The world's apex cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC), is trading 1.2% higher at $58,122.76 at press time, while Dogecoin (DOGE), seeing high interest of late, is down 1.27% at $0.3826.

Why It Matters: The event comes in the wake of the so-called "Alt Season," where several cryptocurrencies with smaller market capitalizations outperform Bitcoin.

ETH market dominance of the cryptocurrency market has risen to 15.4% as of press time while that of Bitcoin is at a 30-month low of 48%.

Ethereum is benefiting from the popularity of decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which heavily utilize its blockchain ecosystem. Nevertheless, concerns related to high transaction fees remain on the network, and projects working on scaling solutions like Polygon (MATIC) have seen a tremendous rise of late as well.

Ethereum rival blockchain ecosystem Binance Smart Chain (BNC) has also seen its native cryptocurrency Binance Coin (BNB) spike 1560% this year, far outpacing the ETH YTD gain of 309.5%.

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