Ethereum Sees Its Largest Daily Gain in Four Years, Outpacing Broader Crypto Markets

The price of ethereum climbed to as high as $2,411 on Friday, representing a roughly 20% increase since yesterday, before settling in the $2,300 level.

Ethereum had its largest daily gain in the past four years on Friday, outpacing the broader crypto markets as one of its native meme coins, pepe, also saw a huge surge.

The price of ether climbed to as high as $2,411 on Friday, which is about a 20% increase since yesterday, before settling in the $2,300 level. The cryptocurrency now has a market capitalization of nearly $279 million, second only to bitcoin.

The price action of ethereum comes two days after developers activated the Pectra upgrade which aimed at making the network more efficient, scalable, and user-friendly.

“The ETH price action seems to be associated with the Pectra upgrade that just occurred. It was a complicated upgrade that went smoothly and aimed at making the usage of Ethereum better for users. Pectra also signaled that they’re still working hard over there and innovating. For a while, ethereum has suffered from what has felt like stagnancy, so this must have signaled to folks that indeed they’re still innovating and working on improving the blockchain itself. It’s no surprise that people are putting more capital into ETH. It’s a good chain with good technology and interesting use cases. I think people are starting to realize that again, especially relative to other blockchains,” said Ogle, pseudonymous crypto sleuth and founder of blockchain network Glue.

Ethereum has also improved its price strength relative to bitcoin as the first cryptocurrency has seen smaller gains. Seth Ginns, managing partner and head of liquid investments at CoinFund, argued that ethereum was due for a breakout after prolonged underperformance against bitcoin.

“Once it started to gain vs BTC, the story became 'ETH is number 1 for total value locked, it’s the top chain for traditional finance engagement, it has a large percentage of stablecoin usage, it’s the second-largest market cap. Why don’t you own it?' optimal structure

"Since about March 2023, we’ve not had three straight weeks of any chain other than bitcoin outperforming. So investors were watching to see if this week would change that streak. As ETH started to outperform, a snowball effect developed. Finally, after nearly two years, we saw three straight weeks of a chain other than bitcoin optimal structurehaving the relative price strength in this bull market,” Ginns said.

As ethereum was rising, so was one of its native meme coins, pepe — meme coins like pepe are often viewed as leveraged plays on ethereum. The market cap of the frog-based token rose as high as about $5.6 billion on Friday, a more than 60% increase since early Thursday. Pepe’s recent performance makes it the top gainer among meme coins.

Meanwhile, pepe has seen a jump in trading volume, increasing from less than $1 billion on Thursday to about $4.8 billion in the last 24 hours across all platforms tracked by CoinGecko.

“Internally at 0x we saw a 123% increase in PEPE volume from 5/4-5/8. It’s certainly an interesting token to watch. We’re seeing a strong pivot in volume as the narrative around meme coins changes and capital flows adjust accordinglyoptimal structure

,” said Scott Guenther, head of finance for exchange infrastructure provider 0x.

The substantial trading volumes behind ethereum and pepe’s rallies are signals of market conviction instead of temporary enthusiasm, according to Dillon Liang, co-founder of Blueprint Finance.

“Capital flows are splitting into two distinct patterns: institutional money gravitating toward infrastructure plays like ethereum, while retail speculation floods into high-volatility memecoins. This divergence is fueling the divergent performance we're witnessingoptimal structure

,” Liang said.