Ethereum ETH/USD continued to rally while Bitcoin BTC/USD traded above the key $40,000 level as the global cryptocurrency market cap rose 2.03% to $1.67 trillion on Thursday night.
What Happened: ETH traded 3.19% higher at $2,813.66 over 24 hours and was up 17.57% over a seven-day trailing basis.
The apex cryptocurrency, BTC, rose 1.73% to $40,425.20 over 24 hours and 1.24% for the week.
The Shiba Inu-themed Dogecoin DOGE/USD was largely muted down 1.38% at $0.20 over 24 hours. For the week DOGE was down 2.55%.
DOGE fell 2.52% and 3.84% against BTC and ETH respectively.
See Also: How To Buy Ethereum (ETH)
THETA THETA/USD was the top gainer on Thursday night over 24 hours and rose 14.85% to $6.99. For the week, THETA has spiked 15.88%.
The governance token of the Theta network traded 13.76% and 12.22% higher against BTC and ETH, respectively.
Decentralized Finance or DeFi-related tokens also spiked over 24 hours at press time with Maker MKR/USD, SushiSwap SUSHI/USD, Aave AAVE/USD, and Uniswap UNI/USD registering gains.
MKR spiked 9.13% to $3,225, SUSHI traded 9.28% higher at $9.54, AAVE rose 7.07% to $366.25, and UNI was up 7.11% to $25.15 in the period.
Why It Matters: Ethereum’s network upgrade dubbed London went live on Thursday at block height 12,965,000.
The proposal ushers in changes including burning transaction fee, which is thought to reduce the circulating supply of the cryptocurrency.
See Also: Is Ethereum On Track To Cross $3,000 Mark?
Lukas Enzersdorfer-Konrad, chief product officer at Bitpanda, said in an email that the “proposals involve huge changes to the current status and are much needed in order to compete with younger smart contract networks such as Polkadot DOT/USD, Solana SOL/USD, Cardano ADA/USD, and others.”
On ETH’s future price trajectory Enzersdorfer-Konrad noted that it took more than two months for the cryptocurrency’s current chart to form the base for “an impulsive move towards the upside.”
“ETH followed BTC on the rebound and soared above €2,000 [$2,365] before the London fork. Ethereum gained 50% from the 21st of July, and it is potentially ready to gain more traction after its upgrade.”
Meanwhile, some are of the opinion that ETH may outpace BTC in terms of market capitalization in an event described as “flippening.”
“I think Ethereum might flip the bitcoin market cap in the long term, but not this year,” CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju, said in an interview with WuBlockchain.
However, the analyst was of the opinion that such a flippening cannot take place without institutional demand. However, these institutions are still coming to grips with understanding Ethereum and DeFi.
“I think it takes a few years to build institutional adoption for Ethereum/DeFi projects.”
Read Next: This Cryptocurrency Gave The Best Returns In July, And No — It's Not Dogecoin Or Any Meme Coin
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